


Abrigar

by unpossible



Series: Storm Shadows [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Everybody Lives, F/M, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Warning for Alderaan, because i am not pretending that was just nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-06-16 13:56:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 35,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15438528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unpossible/pseuds/unpossible
Summary: The shackles around her wrists are a weight Jyn can’t ignore. She’s out of the Imperial frying pan, and straight into the Rebel Alliance fire.They know her name. Herrealname. This is bad. It’s so,sobad.Same kriff, different day, Jyn thinks tiredly.Then he steps out of the shadows, and everything is so much worse.





	1. Jedha

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, and welcome. The first part of this series gives a pre-canon glimpse of a what-if Jyn and Cassian had met and had a one-night stand years earlier. It's not a particularly original idea, but I'm seeing where it takes me.
> 
> The first parts of this work will take us through canon, and the rest will take us beyond.

 

The shackles around her wrists are a weight Jyn can’t ignore. She’s out of the Imperial frying pan, and straight into the Rebel Alliance fire. They bring her into some kind of command centre and while they don’t do anything as obvious and crude as torture – or even stand over her and interrogate – the lopsided conversation makes it clear as day that she is the only one there without allies, without anyone to watch her back. They bounce the information back and forth, a strong team with a strong goal. The Senator, the general, the watching pilot and old man.

They know her name. Her _real_ name. Even Feren doesn’t know Jyn’s real name. This is bad. It’s so, _so_ bad.

_Same kriff, different day_ , Jyn thinks tiredly. 

Then he steps out of the shadows, and everything is so much worse.

For a moment she just stares, convinced it’s her imagination, seeing _him_ when it’s just a similarity, just a co-incidence. Jyn has thought she’s seen Will a hundred times since that night, and it’s never him. But this time she’d not seeing _her_ Will. He’s older. Unshaven. Tired and cynical.

Then he speaks. Says, _When’s the last time you saw your father_ and she _knows_ that voice. The neutral accent is gone but she _knows_ that voice.

Jyn answers mechanically, feeling sick.

It’s _him_. It’s Kera’s father. And he stares at Jyn like she’s a stranger. Like he doesn’t remember her at all. In the back of her head is Kera’s soft little voice saying, _You’ll tell him, won’t you mama? If you see him again?_

The Rebels know about Jyn’s father and his work – know a hell of a lot more than _she_ does. They know about Saw. And now they’re going to use her – _he’s_ going to use her. Captain Cassian Andor. It might even be his real name, she thinks, bitter.

His mission is to get to Saw, through Jyn. She stares straight ahead and shoves Will out of her mind, swallowing convulsively. Saw abandoned her, true. But for years before that he raised her and protected her. She’ll never be able to cast that off entirely. Jyn has first-hand knowledge now, of how hard it is to protect a child from this world. She knows exactly the kind of sick usage that can await a child so young if she’s alone and undefended. She has nightmares about it often enough.

But Jyn has other priorities now. Has had for seven long years. And Saw comes second to Kera. Her father too, if it comes to that. If these Rebels can offer Jyn her freedom, she’ll take it. Even if she has to work with Captain Cassian Andor to get it.

 

 * * *

 

They land on Jedha in the middle of the night.

Cassian gazes out at the soft glow of Jedha City, brow crinkled, and then shakes his head. “We need the daytime crowds to blend in,” he says. “Better to get some sleep while we can.”

Jyn stares at him, disbelieving. As _if_ she could sleep right now. Saw Gerera was nearby, for the first time in years. Her second father. Saw was a memory as familiar as her Papa and a last image as gut-wrenching as her mother. She gives a quick shake of her head, which Cassian ignores. He was about as emotional as his droid, this new Captain Cassian Andor of Rebel Intelligence. It almost made it possible to forget she’d ever known him as Will. If it weren’t for the shadows in his eyes, the weight he carried on his shoulders. Whatever had happened to him in the years since Wecacoe, it hadn’t been easy.

By the time Jyn blinks out of her thoughts, he’s dragging a blanket out of a storage cabinet, and folding up his jacket for a makeshift pillow.

“ _I_ won’t sleep,” Kaytoo informs them. “I shall watch and make sure no-one shoots Cassian in the back while he is resting.”

Jyn raises an eyebrow at the droid, unable to resist. “Accidentally, you mean?”

“No. Not accidentally.”

“Hm,” she says. “I suppose you must meet a lot of people who want to shoot the Captain. Can’t exactly blame you for expecting it.”

“Enough,” Cassian says, voice flat and calm. “Even if neither of you intends to rest, I do.”

Jyn shrugs and settles back against the side of the ship. She’s not about to try to stare down a droid, but she makes like neither of her companions exists and stares straight ahead, emptying her thoughts of everything but the small family waiting for her return, waiting for word.

She’ll do what she has to do. It’s what she’s good at, after all.

 

* * *

 

She’s a tiny little thing, really, Cassian thinks, Jyn Erso. A small package to hold so much potential for swift and shocking violence, like the way she’d wielded that baton. It makes him like her. Makes him think about another small but deceptively strong creature he’d held briefly in his arms, all those years ago.

He doesn’t think about Nari much. Had tried to blur her memory as quickly as possible, if he’s honest, shot himself up with a drug that had addled his head so that he couldn’t really remember her at all. She’d been a blinding flare of warmth and comfort in a life that has been one long controlled spin from danger to potential disaster. If he’d thought about Nari too much. If he’d gone looking for her the way he used to dream of doing.

He’d have lost focus. Probably ended up dead, or getting _her_ killed.

No. Cassian told himself he didn’t remember the colour of her eyes and made himself forget the particular quirk of her mouth as she smiled. The few, undeniable memories that refuse to fade he keeps tucked away for the worst nights, when his hands feel like tainted weapons more than a part of his body, when his voice is only for lying and cheating and his heart is a cold dead creature.

On those nights Cassian lets himself remember the way her head had tucked beneath his chin as they lay side by side, after. Lets himself feel it again, her hand curving sweetly at his hip and the laugh she’d tried to smother when his fingers inadvertently wandered over a ticklish spot on her ribs. It was a clean, beautiful memory, and he kept it at arms’ length as much as possible, as if his spy’s mind could somehow stain it.

And now he’s being shoved, hooded, through the streets of Jedha with another woman like Nari, small and strong and fierce, and he’s trying so hard not to like her. But she ran to that child - a _stranger’s_ child - and put her body on the line. With nothing to gain by it, no angle.

How long since Cassian had done something like that? An act of simple kindness? Not since he’d leaned out a window on Wecacoe and called, _Hey_ to a girl in the street. And there hadn’t been any kind of risk in that for himself, beyond the paranoia natural to a spy that she might be a plant, or an informant.

What has he become in the years since? What kind of man is he now?

Cassian is very much afraid he doesn’t want to know the answer.

 

  * * *

 

The blind monk says _you carry your prison with you wherever you go_

It stings more than such a simple statement warrants. Cassian knows what he is. The work he does, the blood on his hands… he might be fighting on the right side of this war but he knows that he is no longer a good man. The future he fights for is for others to enjoy. Even if Cassian survives to see it, such peace is not for him. Not anymore.

It’s not until the moment he’s facing Saw Gererra with his hand on his blaster that Cassian realizes he didn’t have to go back for Jyn. As long as he had the pilot, Cassian could have left Jedha, mission intact.

He takes her with him anyway, and doesn’t think too hard about why.

 

 

  * * *

 

 

_A weapon like that,_ Jyn thinks. She leans back against the shuddering walls of the U-wing and tries to sort out everything in her head, even though there’s a planet collapsing around them and they’re not safe yet.

_Saw_. The look on his face as he’d limped toward her. At least now she could be sure that the pain of separation over all these years hadn’t been hers alone. That was some consolation, she supposed. But now there’s Jedha, red dust boiling up into the sky like the worst kind of nightmare. She turns her head to stare out at the horror of it and thinks of her father and that hologram. Seeing his face, his voice, after all these years has opened up a raw place inside her that never really healed. The desperation in him, and now she is staring at the reason why.

A weapon like that, and no-where is safe. _No-one_ is safe.

_Kera_ , she thinks, and drops her head into her hands. _How can I protect you against_ that _?_

 


	2. Jedha 2, Eadu

 

Cassian stands by the comms console with yet another kill order ringing in his ears and listens to the Imperial pilot, stumbling over his words as he talks to Jyn. Bhodi’s words burn like acid.

_He said I could get right by myself… if I was brave enough to listen to what was in my heart_

Then Jyn turns that focus on Cassian. He loses control of the conversation completely, and finds himself staring in disbelief at Jyn.

She stands there, still shaking from adrenaline, but so forthright and full of hope. She still believes it can all be that clean and simple: _we’ll find him and bring him back and he can tell them himself_

 _You can tell she was raised by Saw Gererra,_ Cassian thinks bitterly. For the Partisans, it would have been exactly that cut and dried. If Saw had ordered it, that’s what would have happened. But the Alliance is different. The Alliance is multi-faceted, fragile, _complicated_.

Cassian knows the Council. Politicians, all of them. A few are pragmatic enough, tough enough to take action. But too many of them will be sceptical of an Imperial science officer to believe. Even with Galen Erso standing in front of them, pointing at the plans, some of them would refuse to act. And the inertia will kill them all, when the Death Star arrives in orbit around the next planet, and the one after that.

And Cassian knows, already, what Draven would say, if they argued over the order. That it’s too great a risk. That a man who could build the Death Star could build _anything_ for the Empire. A man like that can’t be allowed to live, no matter how passionate an advocate his daughter is.

 

 

And yet.

Cassian doesn’t take the shot.

 

 

 

On that platform, in that relentless rain, he has to drag Jyn away from her father’s body. It hammers at him, too many memories, too close to the truth, too close to the past. How many dead bodies has he walked away from? More than he could ever possibly count.

He climbs and climbs while Alliance fighters fall out of the sky above them, dragging Jyn with him. The gun is heavy in his hands and as he blinks into the blinding rain, Cassian can barely remember anymore what he does it for.

He’ll never have even those precious few seconds Jyn just had with her father. But he has the horrible feeling, a certainty that’s been growing for years. That if by some miracle he did ever come face to face with his mother, his father, if he finds them in the afterlife (if there is one).

They wouldn’t even recognise the man Cassian has become.


	3. Eadu

 

 

There’s a new ship, an Imperial ship, lifting off the surface of Eadu in the rain.

_I try to think of you only in the moments when I am strong_

Oh, how she could relate, Jyn thought with a fierce surge of guilt and fury. Papa, oh _Papa_. She could still feel his wet, slack cheeks under her hands. She hadn’t even told him- she hadn’t told him about Kera, that he was a grandfather, that she-

She clenches her fists and finds her hand taken in a strong, comforting grip.

When she looks down she sees it is the guardian. Chirrit. Something warm flows from him to her, though both their hands are clammy and shaking. _I am one with the Force,_ she thinks, _Is_ _Papa is one with the Force, now? With Momma?_

The thought is no comfort, not yet, and she whirls on Cassian like a fury, and spills all the bile she can think of. She doesn’t shout, her voice is low and shaking and righteous. But he’d climbed down there, with his careful words about seeing what they were up against, and he’d had Papa in his rifle sights. He’d watched the Alliance drop their bombs on a man who had given up years of his life for their cause.

He’d carried that gun in those same hands that had taught Jyn how much she could crave a gentle touch.

_We don’t all have the luxury of deciding when and where we want to care about something_

And oh, _that_ burns. Because she’d had her priorities rearranged for her, all right. _He’d_ done it, five years ago on Wecacoe, and he’d walked out of that room without a word and then forgotten Jyn completely. Had sailed off to do the Rebellion’s bidding, becoming a tool for others instead of deciding for himself. So she throws the worst thing she can think of at him, _stormtrooper,_ and watches the hit land.

And none of it changes anything. Papa is dead, and the Death Star lives on.

 

 * * *

 

The Council don’t listen. They don’t want to hear.

That hopeless look in Cassian’s eyes makes so much more sense now. She’s not sorry for what she said to him, but she understands now why he’d told her _it’s not me you need to convince_.

She walks out of there, numb. She’s not sure what can be done, now. She comes to a stop beside Chirrut and Baze, Bhodi at her back, and for all her hopelessness she is grateful to have them with her. What can she do now? Regather her daughter and try to hide from a weapon that can kill whole planets at a time?

And then he’s waiting for her. Cassian. Standing in the hangar in front of a crowd of soldiers just like him. And for the first time she can see the shadow of Will, younger and head held higher, eyes holding the beginning of hope.

_Everything I did, I did for a cause that I believed in._

And she takes a breath, because that’s the difference between them, isn’t it. Cassian had pledged himself to a cause, while Jyn had kept her eyes down and thought small, the way she’d been taught. First to protect herself, and then to protect Kera. But perhaps they were both trying to do the same thing, in the end.

She smiles at him, tremulous.

And then he says, _Welcome home_.

 

* * *

 

5 Years Previously

_“If I’m going to do this,” Jyn said to Feren, “I’ll need somewhere safe. Somewhere no-one knows me.”_

_“A home,” Feren said, voice an almost inaudible murmur that would tell Jyn she’d been enslaved even if she’d never seen the tattoo. It was the voice of someone used to being invisible._

_Jyn swallowed, could almost smile at the irony. Jyn knew how to be unnoticed when she needed to, could slip through a crowd, or become someone else as needed. But Feren’s skill takes it to a whole other level, a level they’re going to need if they go through with this insane plan._

Why am I doing it? _Jyn asks herself again. But the answer is, really, that she has craved family for many long years now, since she saw her mother fall and her father dragged away. Whatever Saw gave her, he couldn’t replace that, and Jyn knew with deep certainty that if she kept going as she was, alone and running and always afraid – she would end up as nothing but sharp edges._

_If she took this chance, if she took this one, huge risk, perhaps she could hold on to something of that girl who played with their droid on Lah’mu._

_For a long moment she stared out the window of the freighter, watching stars streak by. This was folly. She knew that. It could well go horribly wrong. But if she was afraid of living, then what was the point? What was the point of_ anything? _Just going through life, walking on, one foot after another, until the end? If she didn’t take this chance to make something, she never would. She knew that instinctively. She would live on, alone, trusting no-one, and leaving destruction in her wake everywhere she went._

_“Takodana,” she finally said, eyes still fixed on the darkness outside. “We’ll go to Maz. She knows everyone.” She was also the closest thing to a trustworthy source Jyn could think of, and the only other person she could risk knowing that Jyn Erso had a child. She took another deep breath. “Maz will help.”_

 


	4. Scarif

 

On the ship, heading to almost certain death, she closes her hand around the necklace and prays. To the universe, to the Force, to the spirits of Lyra and Galen Erso, if they are watching over her. _The strongest stars have hearts of Khyber_ , she thinks. _Be strong, little star. Be strong, if I don’t return._

Is she doing the right thing? How can she know?

She’s almost certainly making her daughter an orphan. But who else can do this? If Jyn ran now, the Empire’s planet-killing weapon would grind any kind of resistance into the dirt, and she condemns Kera to growing up under that yoke, never knowing any kind of safety or freedom. And Krennic may well have recognized Jyn, on that platform in Eadu, which means he’ll be looking for her again. So even running wouldn’t be safe anymore.

She can feel one edge of her necklace digging into the palm of her glove. It’s jagged and rough, has been for years. Ever since she chipped off one side of the crystal and placed another necklace around Kera’s neck.

She can feel Chirrut’s eyes on her, and knows, somehow, that he knows. She’s left a note for him, and another for Cassian, just in case. She wants someone to know about Kera, if Jyn doesn’t return. Someone should tell her daughter why she couldn’t come back. Someone should tell Feren how and why Jyn disappeared.

“It’s incomplete,” the guardian says to her softly, spies and saboteurs milling around them. He nods at the crystal.

“I had to split it, years ago,” Jyn tells him, tremulous smile on her mouth. “Like my heart.”

He nods, just a little, and puts a hand on her shoulder. “All will be as the Force wills it,” he says. No reassurance that everything will be all right. She appreciates that. He’s a man who has lost much in his life, and lost more again in the past few days. He knows how badly this could go.

She lifts her eyes to Baze, standing behind and just to the side of Chirrut, as always. “Let’s hope the Force wills us a victory,” she says. They’ve barely spoken, she and Baze, but she recognises a kindred spirit. Pragmatists, both of them.

He gives her one solemn nod. She nods back and goes up to the cockpit to join Bhodi and Kaytoo.

 

 

 

_Five Years Earlier_

_“All right. What about the Noe'ha'on system?” Maz said finally. This is the ninth place she’s suggested. Jyn is beginning to wish Saw hadn’t helped her to become quite so well travelled._

_Jyn thought carefully. “Never been there.”_

_“Finally! It’s not far from here, either.”_

_Jyn eyed her, uncertain._

_“You’ve heard of The Temple of Illumination?”_

_“No.”_

_Maz just nodded. “They build temples throughout the galaxy. I know of one. They may be willing to take you in for a time. It is very isolated, almost no contact from the outside.”_

_Jyn nodded. That was what she needed. No bumping into anyone who knew any of the names she’d used with Saw._

_“This group’s leader is an old friend of mine, a Mirialan. She’s what you’d call a pragmatic type who accepts the necessity of using forged idents to allow their adepts to move around the galaxy. It may be that they will house you anonymously for a time, in return for a series of well-forged papers.”_

_“Will they take us both?” Jyn asked._

_Maz tilted her head in surprise. Her eyes turned to take in Feren. “I can ask,” she said finally._

_“I will work,” Feren spoke hurriedly, quietly, unaccustomed to taking the initiative. “I am strong. Whatever is required of me, I will do.”_

_“We’re a package deal,” Jyn said firmly. “I can’t do this on my own, so if Feren isn’t welcome…”_

_That wizened face creased in a smile, “I didn’t say that. I was only surprised, my girl. It’s good to see you with a friend.”_

_Jyn turned her head and watched Feren as that word, friend, reached her ears. She dipped her head, hiding her face._

_A tiny smile touched Jyn’s face. “It’s good to have a friend,” she said._

 

 


	5. Scarif II

 

After Krennic, with the plans safely transmitted and the battle still raging overhead, she clings to Cassian. They stagger together to the elevator. She can’t believe he’s still here, that he made that climb with those injuries. There are words, trapped behind her teeth, but she doesn’t know how to say it. Not now, when the world is blood and pain and she knows their team of Rogues, their little found family is likely decimated.

So she looks her fill at him, and sees him doing the same.

 _Maybe this is it_ , she thinks. _Maybe this is what we get_ – Kera’s parents, making the galaxy safer for her.

She’ll tell him. On the beach, in the sunlight. Not here, in this shiny box built by the Empire.

And he’ll know. He’ll know there’s a small piece of both of them, out there. Living.

And then they walk out into the light and it’s blinding. Blinding and terrifyingly familiar. It’s the end, the end of it all, and he says _Your father would have been proud of you, Jyn_

It’s soft, and she manages a tremulous smile, feeling her heart crack open at the purity, the kindness of it. She opens her mouth to reply, and then there’s the familiar sound of an approaching ship, and the back bay is open, water spraying at them as the ship swings around and they see Baze, one of the rebels beside him. Both of them are gesturing frantically and beyond, Chirrut is slumped against a bench further inside the ship, another rebel propping him up with their one good arm.

_Life._

Jyn drags Cassian to his feet and they stumble forward, into the water, the horizon rushing on at them again, like on Jedha, a nightmare made real. Jyn _heaves_ , her shoulder under Cassian’s and she gets his upper body onto the ramp and Baze is hauling him up, Jyn crawling on hands and knees into this impossible, wonderful hope.

“Bodhi, _go_ ,” Baze shouts, and keeps tugging at Cassian, at Jyn until they are far enough inside not to fall out again. They lay where they are, on the floor of the ship, trusting their lives to Bhodi’s shaking hands while the impossibly blue sky of Scarif gets smaller and smaller, and finally disappears behind the closing ramp.

 

 

 

_Five Years Earlier_

_Jyn’s never spent this long in one place before. It’s not easy to accept the confinement, even though she knows it’s necessary, even though she imposed it on herself. None of the Adepts would care if she chose to leave the temple and wander the forest, but she promised herself to stay out of sight of any visitors while she’s so obviously, visibly with child, and besides – what if the baby decided to come while she was out in the forest?  Jyn doesn’t know the first thing about childbirth, except that it scares the hell out of her._

_So far, motherhood is pretty easy. The baby goes wherever she goes, it’s fed and warm and safe while its in her belly. Once it’s born… well. She has a whole new set of nightmares now, and only a few of them involve the Empire._

_She heard Feren before she saw her. The Nitka scuffed her feet on the worn stone floor by way of warning, since Jyn was jumpy as an ash-rabbit right now, and even less rational._

_“Good day?” Feren asked before she was even in the door._

_“Same as yesterday,” Jyn replied, turning toward her with a wry smile. She pushed herself away from the table, still half-covered with unfinished idents. She ran a hand over her sizeable belly, still amazed every time at the miracle that was happening inside her._

_“Dinner,” Feren said, and gestured with the pot in her hands._

_“Smells great.”_

_Once one end of the table is cleared they sit and share a companionable meal together. They don’t talk a lot, even now with the months of enforced company, Feren was still shy and reserved._

_Plate mostly cleared, Jyn leaned back and watched Feren for a few moments. “Do you remember your parents?” she asked on impulse._

_The Nitka froze. Eyes on her plate, she shook her head. “Nothing more than a song my mother used to sing at night,” she said finally. “Not their faces. Not their names,” she admitted, even more quietly._

_“I’m sorry,” Jyn said, and leaned down, trying to catch the female’s eye._

_Feren made a swift gesture with her wrist which Jyn learned only a few days into this whole mad scheme meant,_ things are as they are, things that cannot be changed must be accepted. _It was an extremely useful gesture._

_“And you?” Feren asked._

_This was a recent development. Feren had taken Jyn’s reticence as an unspoken command for many months, but had just recently begun to show a small amount of curiosity about Jyn’s past. She still doesn’t know the name Jyn Erso, though._

_Safer for her if she never does._

_“My mother was killed in front of me when I was small,” Jyn said after a moment. Her voice came out steady, if sad._

_That made Feren look up._

_“They took my father away,” Jyn added. “I hid. A family friend came and found me. After.”_

_They stared at one another for a long time._

_A Nitka’s face was never easy to read, but Jyn could tell her friend was struggling to find words to convey sympathy._

_Finally, Jyn smiled, and made the same gesture the Nikta had made moments earlier._ Things are as they are.

_It made a hard-won smile break over Feren’s face._

 


	6. escape

 

For a few moments Jyn just lies there, knowing they are – once again – fleeing the awesome power of her father’s terrible creation. She breathes, feels Cassian breathing beside her, his chest against her arm, and waits for oblivion. The others took a terrible risk coming after them. They should have been in orbit before now, and it’s possible that it was far too late to try and outrun the blast wave.

When the breaths keep coming, second after second, and it begins to seem more likely that they won’t be atomised, and she rolls to her side.

Cassian is white with pain, jaw clenched hard, and she remembers suddenly the crunch of his body hitting the beam on his way down. Broken ribs absolutely, internal bleeding likely. _Could be spinal damage,_ she thinks, and bolts upright.

“Cassian,” she says, voice choked. With the fading adrenaline he’s probably feeling every second of the pain he’d missed for the past ten minutes.

His eyes meet hers. “Check the ship for trackers,” he grits out. “Can’t lead the Empire back to the base.”

She lets out a sobbing, disbelieving breath. Even now. Even _now_ , he’s worried about the Alliance.

“Jyn,” he says, eyes pleading through the pain.

Always the mission. “Yes, Captain,” she murmurs, and manages a smile, touches his hand as she pushes wearily to her feet.

“Rishi,” he mumbles. “Rishi.”

“The planet or the moon?” Baze asks from Chirrut’s side. The other rebel, Vander, she remembers now, is checking the ship’s supplies and watching Cassian with worried eyes.

Jyn wraps her arms around herself and waits, hating this but knowing it’s necessary.

“Mm. The planet. Tell them Willlix. Garden,” he slurs out.

They must be codewords. Is there anywhere Cassian _doesn’t_ have a bolthole?

She watches him take a shuddering breath and grit out, “Farm on the edge of the western sea. Tell them, garden trampled by banthas. They’ll have medicine.” He grimaces and recites a string of numbers that is probably the signal for a beacon or a secured comm band. Jyn stares, unable to believe his strength of will.

“We have it, Captain,” Baze says quietly. “You can rest. Rest now.” She makes a strangled noise of protest as Cassian closes his eyes. He looks so pale and still. So close to death.

“Probably better he’s out of it for this part,” Baze tells her, as Vander thumps a fair-sized medical kit down onto the grate beside her. She raises her eyebrows at the bacta patches and medications, even a breather mask.

“Only the best for the Empire,” he tells her, lip curling. He takes the mask and turns back to the other rebel, whose breaths are audible and rasping.

“I think he hurt his back,” Jyn tells Baze. Understatement. He’d landed on two different plasteel girders on his way down.

Baze shakes his head. “For that he’ll need a real doctor. We can’t fix anything internal with this,” he waves a hand at the kit.

“Chirrut?” she asks softly.

Baze freezes for a half-second, then says, “Grenade got too close. He needs a real medic, too.”

Their eyes meet and hold.

“Go help the pilot,” Baze tells her. “I’ll watch over our wounded birds.”

She runs an eye over him, sees the scorch marks on his armour.

“Go, little sister,” he says, and there’s a ghost of a smile in his worried eyes.

She stumbles up to the cockpit. They’re already out of atmo, heading hastily away from the battle overhead, which is good, since right now they look Imperial, but don’t have any Imperial codes, which means that at any moment they could be blasted out of existence by either side.

Sounds pretty typical, actually.

 

 

 

One glance out the window tells her that Bhodi has headed away from all the fighting, putting the curve of the planet of Scarif between them and the two armadas. She doesn’t think about the destruction below them, or where the plans might be right now. “Cassian says to head for Rishi.”

He lets out a shuddering breath and nods once.

“You’re all right?” she asks Bodhi, sliding into the co-pilot’s seat. “You made it.”

He’s shaking, his whole body trembling even as his hands move with confidence over the controls. His clothes are singed, and she think he’s probably carrying some burns on the side of his body that she can’t see.

“There was. A grenade,” he admits. “A stormtrooper threw it inside Rogue One.”

Jyn sucks in a sharp breath.

“I just. I was so angry,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “For it to end like that, after all the impossible things we... But there was an open maintenance hatch beside me so I – I jumped. I dove through it and rolled and rolled.”

“You _rolled away_ from a _grenade?”_

He bends his head, staring down at his hands. They’re pretty much the only part of him not cut up and bruised. He’s almost laughing, breathless. “Well. Yeah. I mean, the blast wave caught me and threw me pretty far, but… I was on the opposite side from the fuel, so.”

“Bodhi Rook,” she says, smiling for the first time. “You are amazing.”

He shrugs, “I’m just the pilot.”

She shakes her head, then says, “How long to Rishi?”

“Not long,” Bodhi says, “it’s in the same sector. Just let me calculate the jump.”

“Hurry,” she tells him, and he nods once, not needing to be told. She hauls herself out of the chair and starts searching the ship for Empire tracking devices.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_Four Years Earlier_

_“I do not recognize this creature,” Feren said, frowning at the vidscreen._

_“They’re native to some tiny Outer Rim planet,” Jyn said absently. “I forget which one. Scavengers. For droids, mostly.”_

_“They are always so small?”_

_“Far as I can tell.” She sat back and surveyed her creation. “She won’t be able to wear it for about another year, I think. Not until she’s steady on her feet and we can trust her not to speak out of turn. Eventually I’ll be able to get some kind of voice synthesiser, so she can talk to both of us and sound like a Jawa. But not yet.”_

_Jyn lifted the mask toward her own face and flicked the switch. The yellow glow from the fake eyes were still too bright to allow her own vision to work properly, so she had to work on that. But there was time yet._

_Feren kept stitching the heavy brown fabric, one foot gently rocking Kera in her crib. Jyn looked down at her daughter’s tiny, miraculous face, and smiled helplessly. Sometimes it was as though her chest wasn’t big enough to hold everything Kera made her feel._

_Her daughter just gave her a gummy smile and tried to shove her own foot into her mouth._


	7. Escape II

 

They come out of hyperspace as close to the Rishi as they dare, and Jyn hits the comm link immediately, the code Cassian had given them already programmed in. There’s no large ships in orbit, not a whole lot of air traffic at all, that she can see.

There’s a crackle and then an abrupt, “Yeah?” Sounds like an older man, voice breathy with exertion or fear.

“I have a message,” Jyn says, “from Willyx.” It hits her, then that Willyx was probably the alias Cassian was using all those years ago, when he’d said _call me Will_. She swallows and presses on. “His garden’s been trampled by banthas.”

For a moment there’s frozen silence then a shaky exhale. _“Kriff_. How bad?”

 _“Bad,”_ she blurts out. “It’s bad.”

Another silence, then he says, “I’ll guide you in. We’ll be ready.”

 

Jyn wants to be on guard and alert as they glide in to the makeshift landing space at the back of the farmhouse, but she’s exhausted and sore and terrified that each breath Cassian takes will be his last. She keeps her hand on her blaster, but that’s about it, she can’t spare enough energy to panic about these strangers. She has to put her faith in Cassian and his backup plans.

It is a man, older and burly, with dark skin and whitening hair. _“Kriff,”_ he says again, looking down at Cassian’s limp body.

“He fell,” Jyn croaks out.

The man nods, “Yes, okay, all right, we need to lift him, but carefully. And hurry,” he adds, though Jyn and Baze and Bhodi are already crowding close.

“There’s two other patients,” Baze tells the man he and Vander heft Cassian off the floor. “Not as bad, but they’ll need help too.”

The man nods, eyes on Cassian. “One at a time, one at a time. This way.” He guides them carefully down the ramp and across the reedy ground. It’s getting close to sunset, Jyn notices, so they’ll have the cover of darkness soon. She glances back at Bodhi, who is waiting in the ship with their other wounded.

They reach the farmhouse door quickly enough, and inside there is a teenager, his hands clamped onto the shoulders of a small girl, not much older than Kera, Jyn thinks. The girl looks sickly and thin, and her eyes are huge in her face as she takes in Cassian’s limp figure.

“On the table,” the man orders. “I’m Danus, by the way.”

“Vander.”

“Baze.”

“Liana.” She’s not quite ready to be Jyn Erso to a bunch of strangers. Not yet.

Baze is already heading back out to the ship, and Jyn gestures Vander to follow.

Danus is opening his pantry door, and Jyn is just about to snap out a reprimand for his time-wasting when he reaches all the way back and hits a switch of some kind, and the entire wall opens up.

“Activate,” the man calls back. “Emergency protocols.”

From inside the hidden room a 2-1B medical droid limps forward, seemingly straight out of the Clone War histories Saw made her study as a child. One leg is badly damaged, and there are scorch marks along one entire side, but it is already deploying it’s scanner toward Cassian, and behind it Jyn can see well-stocked shelves of medical supplies.

“Please state the nature of the emergency,” the droid begins. Its voice is distorted and slurred.

“He fell a long way,” Jyn says, voice raw and shaking. “Landed on at least two girders on his way down, I’m pretty sure he hit his upper back. Oh, and a blaster wound.”

The droid begins to run its protocols without pause, checking Cassian’s most basic systems. Danus gestures to the teenager, “Krin, we’re going to need a bacta solution and painkillers at the very least,” he says, voice softening.

The boy eyes Jyn, then releases his sister’s shoulders and heads back to the hidden room.

“What about the rest of you?” Danus asks, glancing between Jyn and the droid, brow creasing with worry.

“Two more,” Jyn says, “One is is struggling to breathe – too much smoke, maybe? And the other - I didn’t see what happened but he’s been unconscious since we took off. There was blood on his temple.”

“Grenade,” Baze grunts as he and Vander pass through the door, Chirrut’s unconscious body sagging between them. “Some shrapnel, but mostly it threw us both back against the side of a bunker. He hit his head pretty good.”

The boy appears at that point, his arms laden with supplies, and Bhodi hastens forward to help while Danus drags a long low couch into the kitchen from somewhere else. Chirrut is laid on it carefully and Jyn takes her first real look at the Guardian. He’s pale, and there’s a starburst of blood on the side of his head, but the rest of him doesn’t look too bad.

Vander and Baze return with the third patient, who is able to walk, if unsteadily, and who is already breathing easier with the help of the mask. Jyn spares the woman a glance, but doesn’t particularly recognise her. Their eyes meet. “Seertay,” the woman says, lowers the mask briefly, and Jyn nods in acknowledgement.

Danus begins to look Chirrut over, the droid still working on Cassian. It’s making soft chirrups to itself, compiling a report, Jyn knows, but everything is so quiet, suddenly that she can barely stand it. “I’ll go get the med kit from the ship,” she mutters, and backs out of the house before anyone can speak.

As the door closes behind her she hears Vander say, “Come on, Seertay, let me help you clean up, get some food into you.”

Once outside she takes a moment to look around properly, too preoccupied during the landing to take stock. The farm is likely for fish, or something else that comes from the sea, she realizes. There are long low beds extending from the marshy banks out into the water, ridges just high enough for someone to walk on to gather in nets, or inspect, or whatever it is they do here. There are no signs of other buildings as far as the eye can see, nor can she see any kind of signal towers or permanent installations on the horizon that might be Imperial, or from any kind of local government.

As landing sites go, a team of Rebels on a stolen Imperial ship could do a lot worse.

She has to wonder just how many escape routes and bolt-holes Cassian is carrying in that head of his. And if perhaps that’s why there was no trace of Nari in his memories. No room left for her.

For some reason that’s the thought that has the air rushing out of her lungs, her knees giving way. Jyn slides down the interior wall of the ship and lets herself fall in a heap on the floor, the same floor where Cassian had been just minutes ago, unconscious and unresponsive. His blood is dripping through the grate by her knee.

They should have died. They must have come _so unbelievably close_ to dying. But somehow they’re still here. Not the foot soldiers, or the Rebel pilots she’d seen dipping and diving in the sky above the tower. But Bhodi and Chirrut and Baze and Vandera and Seertay and… probably, Cassian. Somehow.

She lets out an embarrassingly loud huff of breath and sound and buries her face in her knees.

Everything hurts. Her hands ache from the climbing and dragging herself over the edge of the broken platform. Her leg hurts from the blaster. Her entire body aches from tension and fear.

“Jyn?” Bodhi’s voice is quiet and tentative and she puts out a hand, doesn’t lift her head, just flails around until she makes contact with his leg.

“Is he dead?” she asks her knees.

“What? No,” Bohdi sounds shocked and frightened. “No, the, the droid is making a shallow bacta soak for his back and arm. The ribs’ll take longer, and there’s definitely swelling along his spine, but- no, he shouldn’t die.”

 _“Kriff_ ,” she lets out shakily.

Bodhi settles in beside her, the length of their arms pressing tight.

“Feels like the whole galaxy’s been trying to kill us lately, huh?” He says.

She lets out a miserable sounding laugh.

“Not just lately,” she mumbles. “For me it’s been like this since I was small.”

She can feel him give her a sideways glance, but she honestly doesn’t have anything else to say. They sit in silence for a while, the adrenaline finally beginning to fade for them both.

At her side, Bodhi is nodding slowly, staring straight ahead. She realizes, suddenly, that his entire body is shaking, fine tremors – he’s shivering. “Bhodi?” she says.

“I’m the pilot,” he tells her without moving his head. Jyn freezes. She hasn’t heard him say that since the escape from Jedha.

“Are you cold? Bodhi?”

She is scrambling to her knees when he suddenly just slumps, folding up quietly onto the floor of the kriffing ship, that same floor where Cassian had-

“Bodhi,” she shouts, and rolls him over.

His arm – the arm he’s been holding tight against his side this whole time – flings out to the side and Jyn gags at what she sees there. There’s a burn, long and vicious, down Bodhi’s entire left side, from just under his arm to his hip. It’s seeping fluid, his clothing is stuck to the edges of it-

She bolts for the house. He’s too heavy for her to move easily, and she’s not about to drag him across the ground with a wound like that – she knows that burns can so quickly become infected.

“Bodhi’s collapsed,” she blurts out to the startled group in the kitchen. “He’s burned – bad, I think. And gone into shock. I can’t move him on my own.”

Danus’ lips thin. “Come on,” he gestures to the teen, and grabs a thick blanket as he strides across the kitchen.

Jyn meets Baze’s worried eyes. “He was hiding it,” she says miserably. “Had his arm tucked over it.”

“He knew he was the only pilot we had, now,” he grunted, eyes sliding over Cassian.

Jyn grimaces and follows the two strangers outside.

They use the blanket to make a large sling and carry Bhodi inside that way, with the wound facing up. The teenager, Krin, doesn’t seem bothered by it, but Jyn can hardly bear to look.

 

 

_Four Years Earlier_

_The nightmare has Jyn close to screaming as she wakes, but she manages to hold it in and not wake anyone. Still, she’s shuddering out breaths that are almost audible, and her skin prickles with a cold sweat that won’t let the dream leave her. Her mother, falling, Kera in her arms this time, both of them dead on the cool ground of Lah’mu while Papa walks away with the man in white._

_She finds herself standing over Kera, hugging herself hard enough to hurt. She’s crazy to do this. To bring another life into this world – into this world, where the Empire’s grip is tightening every day. What right did she have to put Kera through this?_

_There’s a quiet rustle and Jyn turns toward Feren, who is rising from her own bed. Without speaking they both walk silently into the next room, closing the door behind them._

_They sat, side by side, and stared into the dark._

_“I can’t disappear like my parents did– tried to do,” she amended. “It clearly doesn’t work. The Empire’s reach is so vast, and their pockets are deep. It’s a big galaxy…” she sighed, “but apparently not big enough.”_

_“If not disappearing, then what?”_

_“I could try faking my death,” she replied thoughtfully, “but it would have to be very,_ very _convincing. Would have to convince Saw and the Partisans, as well as the Empire, and Saw is the most paranoid man ever to draw breath. I’d probably have to leave behind a limb as evidence, honestly, for him to even begin to believe it.”_

_Feren shook her head and Jyn understood what she was saying. That, too, wasn’t worth the risk. A permanent injury of that kind - there were prosthetics, of course, high quality ones, but they were expensive, and would require repair and upgrades at times. That would force her out into Imperial planets, or making deals to get substitutes, which undercut the entire purpose of faking her death in the first place. Also, if anyone would understand being prepared to sacrifice an arm or a leg for the cause, again, it would be Saw._

_“I think Liana Hallik has to continue to run jobs,” Jyn says finally, into the silence. “Kestrel Dawn, too. If I keep popping up now and then, no-one will have a reason to look any further for me. They’ll assume that the gaps in between are just me lying low or on another job.” Saw’s the only one left who knows Jyn Erso, but he’s clearly not looking for her, and she tries not to let that burn._

_“Alone?” Feren asks._

_Jyn shrugs, then glances sideways. “Without you and Kera, definitely. The whole point is to hide her existence from the rest of the galaxy, and you’re her protection. They can’t know you and I are connected in any way. We find a quiet planet where the two of you can live, something near a travel hub so I can disappear into the crowd.”_

_Feren watches her with troubled eyes. “You will have no-one to watch your back.”_

_Jyn manages a smile. “Story of my life,” she says. “But you’ll be here to watch Kera, and that’s all that matters to me.”_

 


	8. Escape III

 

Hours tick by.

They make do with bacta-soaked bandages for Bodhi, the droid cycling between his four patients, still monitoring, still calculating odds aloud until Jyn feels like she could scream from it. By now she’s managed to clean herself up and get her own wounds tended to. She feels like she’s been pummeled all over with heavy sticks and then jabbed with some blunt knives in a lot of inconvenient places, but even so, she can’t sleep.

Vander appears in the doorway at some point, his eyes, too, fixed on Cassian. He’s probably known the Captain a lot longer than Jyn has, she realizes with a jolt. Their eyes meet and he gives her a measured nod. There’s no anger in his eyes, no blame. But he says quietly, “Did it work?”

She hasn’t told them, she realizes in horror. Kriffing hell, what an _idiot_. “Yes,” she says, proud and certain. “Bodhi got the message through to the Alliance fleet, they brought down the shield. We transmitted the plans to Admiral Raddus. It got through.”

Vander sags against the door, and lets out a long, explosive breath. “Thank the Force,” he mutters. At her side, Baze jerks slightly, and she puts a hand on his knee. Vander scrubs a hand over his face. “He’ll make it,” he tells Jyn, then. Nods at Cassian. “He’s tougher than he looks.”

She tries for a smile that feels more like a grimace. “Course he will,” she says back.

He nods at her and disappears again, back to check on Seertay, she supposes.

She slumps next to Baze, watching feverishly as Cassian’s chest continues to rise and fall, as Bodhi mutters to himself, as Chirrut lies so terribly, terribly still. At some point, the merciful darkness takes her.

 

 

 

It’s late morning when she awakes, and for a second there’s nothing but panic.

She lurches upright, gasping, hands searching frantically for something-

“Peace, little sister,” comes Baze’s voice. “We’re still safely hidden.”

He doesn’t say _All is well_ , she notes.

“How are they?” she manages, her mouth dry and heart racing.

“Chirrut woke briefly,” Baze says. “Bodhi is awake and eating. Seertay is fine, breathing normally now, according to the droid. The Captain is still sleeping, though that is likely the kindest thing for him. Bacta doesn’t cut the pain.”

She nods and keeps her eyes on her knees.

“I think we should return to Yavin as soon as we can,” Baze tells her. “Chirrut and Bodhi will likely heal on their own now, but the Captain has used almost all of the supplies of bacta they have here, and we don’t know if we’ve even identified all of his injuries. He needs better medical care than we can give him.”

Jyn nods again. “We should double check the ship for trackers,” she says. She doesn’t relish the thought of returning to Draven’s orbit, or all of those watching eyes, but they need resources for Cassian, if nothing else. And she needs to know those plans got through. Needs to know for certain.

Baze nods. “I’ll go with Bodhi and search the ship. He’s likely to know any you might have missed. You should eat.” His large, warm hand falls on her shoulder and squeezes for a moment. She takes in a shaky breath and drags herself up.

 

 

 

_Three Years Earlier_

_Of all things, they almost ran into one another at the spaceport.  Jyn caught a glimpse of Feren’s familiar head-horns between two red-clad pilgrims, and it took everything she had not to react. She turned as casually as she could, not wanting to risk Kera spotting her mother and breaking cover. She didn’t_ want _to teach her daughter these tricks of the trade, how to hide yourself and believe the lie so well that you never broke cover, no matter what the situation. How to see a beloved, familiar face and let your eyes skate straight past it._

_But she had to. That was the reality of her life. She had no way of knowing where her father was or what he was doing, but if he was still alive, still with the Empire, then Jyn was a weapon that could be used against him, and so was Kera. Her connection with Saw probably made her a person of interest to plenty of groups with bad intentions, as well._

_Jyn faded back away through the crowd, heading away from the pilgrims until she was no longer in a direct line of sight._

_She was meant to be meeting with a smuggler she’d originally met through Saw, years before, who needs an extra person for a job on some snow-bound hell hole. Feren and Kera were meant to be routing through Corellia, not here._

_She checked her surroundings, first, all her instincts on alert for anything that didn't fit. She climbed to the mezzanine level and used the reflection of the windows to check for Feren and Kera – yes, there they were, and she could tell by the set of Feren’s shoulders that she, too, had seen Jyn and knew what a close call they'd had. Kera paced at the Nitka’s side in her Jawa disguise, obediently staying close to Feren and looking neither right nor left._

_Jyn breathed out a little and checked in at a terminal. There was a general notice about a quarantine situation on Corellia and she nodded to herself, that made sense, explained why her little family were unexpectedly here. Still, she’d be on alert in case there was something bigger going on._

_Ten days. Ten days for this job and then they’d all be together again._

_A Twi’lek appeared on the edge of her vision and Jyn turned quickly, wary. “You Kestrel Dawn?” he asked._

_“You’re Gull?”_

_“That’s me,” he said and eyed her up and down. “Apparently you’re a quick hand with a blaster and you don’t ask too many questions.”_

_“I’m not fond of questions in general,” Jyn said, jaw firm. “And here’s an idea - how about we don’t have this conversation in the middle of a crowded spaceport.”_

_He grinned a little. “A villain after my own heart,” he said. “Beeto’s waiting at pad nine.”_

_“Lead me to him,” Jyn said, and walked away from her tiny family without a backward glance. She wouldn't let herself think about them again until she was away from here. It’ was the only choice she had._


	9. Yavin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to be putting in some Spanish (Festian!) in a few chapters' time, so if anyone speaks it and would like to advise me, please hit me up in the comments! (All of which I read, and appreciate so much)

 

 

They land back on Yavin IV without ceremony, though Jyn hears Bodhi use their Rogue One call sign again, and smiles a little to herself. She’s honestly not sure what sort of reception they should expect – Cassian’s the one who would have known, but he’s only semi-conscious, even now. Luckily they’d had other rebels on board, one had assisted Bhodi with the flying, and the other had known the codes to get them permission for landing.

Medics swarm the ship and take Cassian out of their hands. Jyn jogs in their wake, unwilling to let Cassian out of her sight, while Bodhi and Chirrut are escorted out with less urgency, but still with a medical team on either side.

She sees Draven out of the corner of her eye, and knows he’ll corner her at some point when she’s least expecting it. Doesn’t really care, as long as she knows Cassian’s prognosis first. It’s possible they’ll be detained, she supposes, they’re mutineers, technically. Though – can Jyn be part of a mutiny when she never officially joined? Cassian and the two newcomers are the only member of Rogue One who are officially part of the Rebel Alliance.

The medics shut her out of the treatment room, citing patient privacy, and she is pacing aimlessly in the hallway when she turns one more time, sees Draven standing at the far end, eyes cold and assessing. Jyn freezes.

“General,” she says, and folds her arms.

“Erso.”

“Do you have the plans?”

Draven blinks at her, and she can see the tension ratchet through his body, no matter how blank he keeps his face. “You secured them, then.”

Her arms drop, and she gapes at him. “We- what? Yes, yes we kriffing secured them, it cost us-”

“I know _exactly_ what it cost the Alliance,” he bites out.

“Raddus got them, we transmitted them,” she keeps talking, the words tumbling out despite her best efforts. “He’s not-”

“Raddus is dead,” Draven says, flat. “The Profundity destroyed.”

Jyn staggers. “No. _No.”_ Her back hits the stone wall.

“If there ever even _was_ a convenient flaw in the Death Star,” he bites out, “we don’t have any proof of it and you’ve cost us half our fleet.”

“No,” Jyn says, shaking her head. She can’t stop, her whole body is just one wall of _No, no no no_ -

Her legs give way beneath her. That thing. The death star, hanging in space like a malignant cancer, able to move wherever it pleases, destroy everything in its path.

Draven turns on his heel. He paces away, deliberate and controlled, like everything he does, but when he pauses at the corner Jyn can’t help but give him some fragment of her attention.

“The Tantine IV was docked with the Profundity,” he mutters. “There are reports that it escaped.”

Jyn blinks. Before she can begin to feel any sliver of hope, he adds, “With Vader in pursuit.”

A shuddering breath escapes her.

All for nothing, then. There is no hope left, not for the Alliance, not for Jyn. All that is left is to reunite with Kera, and wait for the bitter, bitter end.

She presses the heels of her hands to her eyes and stays slumped in the hallway outside Cassian’s suite until Bodhi finds her and takes her away.

 

 

 

_Two Years Earlier_

_“Stay, Momma,” Kera said._

_Jyn’s heart broke just a little. “I can’t sweetheart, I’m sorry. I have to go to work.”_

_“Back tonight?”_

_Jyn pressed her lips together to stop them from trembling and said, “I’ll be gone for a week or two this time. But when I get back, we’ll go to the lake and swim all day, all right?”_

_Kera frowned at her, fretful and sleepy. “Back_ tomorrow _.”_

_“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,” Jyn said. “And then swimming.” She leaned in for one last hug before Kera could argue again, and held back the tears of guilt by sheer force of will. “Good night, little star,” she murmured, and kissed Kera’s forehead. “Momma loves you.”_

_“Momma,” she murmured back, and her arms tightened around Jyn’s neck for a few moments before Jyn carefully disentangled herself._

_The stupid tears came when Jyn was safely out of Kera’s room and she dashed them away impatiently. No time for that._

_When she finally straightened and lifted her head, she was unsurprised to see Feren lingering in the doorway to the kitchen. Behind her the table was heaped high with droid parts and tools, jobs part-finished and awaiting the Nitka’s deft touch.  Jyn gave her a weak smile. “So. I’m the worst mother that ever lived,” she said. “Big surprise.”_

_“You are a good mother,” Feren said, “And there are many parents who have to leave their children at home while they try to put food upon the table. She is too young to understand but you have no need to apologise.”_

_Jyn raised one shoulder and followed her friend into the kitchen. “Logically that makes sense. But.” She dropped into a chair and managed a wobbly smile. “It doesn’t feel true.”_

 

 


	10. Yavin II (I know, it's actually Yavin IV just humour me)

 

Jyn and Bodhi harass the medics for long enough that they finally, reluctantly admit that Cassian is now stable and will be released from the bacta tank in the evening. Jyn swallows and stares down at her hands, finally letting herself think beyond the next few seconds. The plans are beyond her, now. Either the Rebel’s mysterious agent will escape Vader and produce the plans, or they won’t. But without Cassian to hook her into Draven’s network, she’s locked out of the Alliance, and Cassian is several days away from being able to take on any kind of mission. No matter how stubborn he is.

It’s time.

 

 

Of course it’s Draven she finds in the Command Centre. Couldn’t be Mon Mothma or even some neutral x-wing squadron leader.

“General.”

“Erso.”

“Mon Mothma told me I’d have my freedom,” she says as evenly as she can.

“I remember.”

Of course he’s going to make her work for it. Fair enough, he’s likely distracted by the search for their missing agent and the Death Star plans, so she keeps her temper under control as best she can.

“There’s somewhere I need to be,” she says. “Someone I have to meet.”

Draven raises his eyebrows at her. He gives her a long, look, layers of meaning in it, and she imagines it has something to do with that file they compiled on her. All that detail about her crimes, but not even a hint of Kera. She’d worked hard to make it that way, but a man like Draven must have noticed the gaps and inconsistencies. It had been the one thing she’d hoped for, that no-one would have enough knowledge of Jyn Erso to consistently look for all of her aliases at once and spot the gaps in between, the rare times when she was just a mother.

“I know where they’ll be in three days time,” she says, and this time she just waits.

“And you want me to arrange your travel.”

She takes a deep breath, trying to hold on to her temper. “It’s what I was promised.”

Draven just grunts. “Fair enough. Destination?”

She tells him.

He nods, thinks for a moment. “We have diplomats arriving tomorrow from there, they can ferry you back on their return trip. Good enough?”

She lets out a long breath.  “Thank you.”

He just nods once, sharply, and turns away.

 

 

It hardly seems fair to do this when he’s only just out of the bacta tank. But she can’t wait, and she can’t leave without saying anything. So she sits at his bedside and waits for him to wake enough to understand her and remember this conversation.

“Cassian,” she says. “I need to go. I’m sorry.”

There’s hurt on his face, obvious for a split second before he finds that mask of his. “Of course,” he manages.

 _“No,”_ she says and leans in, imploring him to understand. “I’m not- I’m _not_ running. I’ll come back. If Draven or whoever will let me. But there’s someone – someone I have to find first. Someone who’s looking for me. And I promised- I _promised_ to come back.”

She can see the misunderstanding happening in his head, and grimaces. He’s picturing a lover, perhaps. Or a business partner. “It’s not- it doesn’t have to change things, if you- I mean. It depends on you. But I’ll come back if I can, and we can- talk.”

Stars, she is _so_ terrible at this. But now is not the time to blurt out the existence of his daughter. Even Jyn knows she can’t dump that news on him and then fly off into the wider universe.

Cassian turns his head to stare up at the ceiling. “It’s fine, Jyn. You have every right to leave.”

She lets out a hissing, frustrated breath. “Cassian.”

He bites his lip and doesn’t answer.

She takes a deep breath and takes a huge leap of faith. She’s never done this before. Ever. “Cassian. I ha- I have a child.”

He blinks stupidly up at the ceiling. Once, twice. Then, “What?” he starts to sit up and she presses a hand to his chest, leaning forward, faces close together.

“Don’t you move,” she said. “Cassian, don’t you _dare_ hurt yourself.”

“You- Jyn, you have- you’re a _mother?_ ” his hand lifts, searching and she takes it in her own.

She nods, tears filling her eyes. “I am. But no-one else knows. I’ve hidden her in every way I can think of.”

For a long moment his eyes just search her face, looking, she knows, for a lie. Well, he won’t find one.

“So you see,” she whispers, “I have to go. She needs me. She’s waiting for me,” and her voice breaks a little.

He’s nodding. “Of course, of _course_ you do.” He clutches at her hand. “Jyn, you – the risks you took. And you never-”

“It was for her, too,” she told him. “Once I knew about the Death Star-” she swallowed. “A weapon like that, there’d be no safe place for anyone. How could I walk away and know I didn’t try to stop it?”

He gives a little headshake, disbelieving. “You’re the bravest woman I’ve ever known,” Cassian told her.

She smiled tremulously at him and shook her head. “I just keep taking my chances as they come,” she said. “But now I have to go to her.”

Cassian nodded again, eyes still searching her face.

“I’ll come back if they let me,” she says again. “And if they won’t… maybe you’ll look for me?”

“Of course I will, if you want me to,” Cassian says.

Her stomach clenches. He sounds so vehement, but she knows as well as anyone that Cassian’s life is not his own. If Draven sends him away on a mission, if Cassian believes the Rebellion needs him…

He’ll go. He’ll take those orders every time. He has hollowed himself out for the cause and he’ll keep doing it until there’s nothing left.

“Jyn,” he says. “I will. I promise.” Obviously her face is easier to read than she’d thought.

“Okay,” she says. “All right.” She takes a breath and risks saying, “I’d like you to meet her.” And she smooths a hand over Cassian’s cheek, knowing she’s showing far too much. But at this point she can’t find it in herself to care. This is war. She knows all of these words might mean nothing in a day, or a week. “There are places you could leave a message for me, if you can’t come and find me. I’ll leave you some names.”

He nods, takes the piece of flimsi.

“Bring Chirrut with you if you have to,” she tells him, trying for a smile, and touches her necklace. “He’ll find me, wherever I end up.”

“That’s good advice,” Cassian tells her, his voice slowing. He’s tiring, as she’d known he would.

“I’m flying out tonight,” she tells him. “I won’t be here when you wake up.”

He nods.

“And when I come back. Cassian. There’s more I have to tell you.” She swallows. “It’s important.”

“Okay,” he slurs, eyes closing.

 

 

_One Year Earlier_

“Feren,” _Jyn gaped, “What did you_ do?”

_“The tattoo was a danger to us all,” she replied, lips drawn back over her teeth in a pained grimace. “This is. Better.”_

_“But- but what-”_

_“I built it,” Feren said. “It has taken… many months.” She spoke slowly, like each word hurt to say._

_Jyn stepped closer. She bent her head over Feren’s arm and surveyed it with a mix of horror and admiration. The cuff was a dull grey colour, sunk into the flesh of the Nitka’s arm where the Hutt life-slave tattoo had once sat._

_“What- what does it do.”_

_“Holds a USI, lets me interface with the droids,” she managed. “Output goes to a datapad. Helps with diagnostics.”_

_Jyn felt a surge of nausea. This wasn’t just on the surface, then. Whatever this was, it was lodged in Feren’s arm right down to the bone. “But you didn’t have to- you’ve gotten so good a droid repair without-”_

_“Has also…” she interrupted, swallowed, “some enhancements.”_

_Jyn raised her head and looked at Feren’s face. Anything was better than looking at the red, angry skin around the cuff, where Feren’s flesh hadn’t yet healed. “Enhancements,” she asked. She had no idea how to feel about this, how Feren wanted her to react._

_One corner of Feren’s mouth twitched. “Security spike concealed inside.”_

_Jyn’s brows flew up. “Security spike.”  She sat back, winded._ “Feren.”

_“I chose,” Feren said. “I choose – I-”_

_Jyn pressed her lips together, hard. She had no idea what to say to this._

_“Many years ahead until she is grown. A lot of risk.”_

_Jyn sighed. This was about her last arrest, then. Jyn had been in bad shape by the time she’d managed to break out. It had been two months of convalescence, without access to bacta. Her knee still twinged sometimes._

_“I would never have asked you to do this,” she said, and her voice wobbled._

_“My friend,” Feren said, and this time her smile held no sign of pain, “that I know.” She hesitated then, and Jyn waited. It had taken years, but she knew now when Feren had something she wanted to say, and she had learned to wait, to give the Nitka space in which to speak._

_“Kera. She is precious.” She bit her lip and looked up. “Not only to you, but to me, as well.”_

_Jyn felt the tears rise in her eyes. “Okay,” she said, voice shaky. “Okay.”_

_And Feren put her good hand on Jyn’s shoulder, leaned in carefully until her head-horns rested against Jyn’s hair. They sat like that for a long time, Kera sleeping peacefully in the next room._

 

 


	11. Yavin III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I feel like this one should have a trigger warning.  
> Without getting too spoilery, this has scenes of intense grief, and if you would like more detail, please read the note at the end of the chapter.

 

 

She overhears it as she walks between the x-wings. At first it’s just snatches of conversation, fragments that make no sense. But then she keeps hearing the same two words, over and over again.

_Alderaan._

_Destroyed._

Her feet freeze. She turns her head. Small segments of conversations grow into bigger segments, making more sense, and all telling the same terrible story.

Alderaan destroyed by the Death Star.

“No,” she croaks out, barely enough breath in her lungs to make the sound. She shakes her head, hard. _No_.

On the other side of the hangar there’s a scream of rage and grief, primal and unmistakable, and Jyn flinches from that sound.

 _No_ , she thinks. _Please. Please, no,_ and she’s not sure who she’s begging, or what, but she wants this to be a universe where Kera and Feren were not waiting for Jyn on Alderaan, a universe where her father never worked to build such a thing as the Death Star, a universe where no-one would ever even want such terrible, unthinkable power.

No.

 _Please_ , no.

She turns away from the outpouring of grief in the hangar, and walks away from the base. She breaks through a maintenance door, half climbs, half-falls down the outside of one of the pyramids, and when she reaches ground level Jyn simply keeps walking, straight into the jungle.

 

 

 

Cassian is slumped against the back of his medical bed, still trying to absorb the news of Alderaan’s destruction when he hears them coming.

“I don’t know where she is,” Bodhi is saying, brow crinkling. “I know she was due to fly out, but she wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye.”

“That depends upon her destination,” Chirrut says. The guardian sounds terrible, his ever present thread of good-humour gone. Cassian supposes he can hardly be blamed, considering today’s events. Whether or not the guardian feels the Force is debatable, but he certainly has a sensitivity to those around him, and tonight there is no-one who can forget the cloud hanging over all of them.

 _It was all for nothing_ , Cassian thinks again. For _nothing_. Alderaan. Beautiful, _peaceful_ , Alderaan.

His team enter the room and he meets their gazes, sees the same devastation and helplessness.

“No-one’s seen Jyn for hours,” Bodhi tells him immediately. “We were hoping she was here.”

Cassian shakes his head, then refocuses. Not for _hours?_ Then either she’s left the planet already to collect her daughter, or she-

His entire body goes cold. Bodhi is right. She wouldn’t just leave. Not after everything they’ve been through. “Where was she going, the ship, where was it going,” he demands, voice a harsh rasp. Ah, _no_. Please. It _couldn’t_ be. _Don’t let this have happened to her,_ he begs the universe, and pushes the blankets back.

“She didn’t say,” Baze replied, and his gaze is worried.

Cassian looks at Chirrut. His face is drawn, tight with pain. “I cannot sense her amongst the souls on this base,” the guardian tells him. “There is too much.”

Alderaan would be a good rendezvous point for a family group. Close to the Core, but. Safe. Not Imperial. Peaceful.

“She just said she was hitching a ride with a ship bringing in some diplomats,” Bodhi said.

Diplomats like the Princess, who was travelling from Alderaan. _“Kriff,”_ Cassian breathes, and slings his legs over the side of the bed, wincing.

“Are you sure you should be-” Bodhi began.

“In the past week she’s watched her father die and lost her adopted father,” Cassian told him. “If there was someone important waiting for her on Alderaan-” He doesn’t know if he has the right to tell the rest of the team about Jyn’s daughter. And perhaps he’s wrong. Perhaps she just left, too anxious to say goodbye.

Baze shakes his head, mutters, “Ah, little sister.”

“I do not sense her on this base,” Chirrut says again.

She wouldn’t want to be around people, Cassian thinks. Not mourning her dead child. With a sudden surge of fear he thinks, _she may not want to be around at all._

“Then let’s start looking outside the base.”

 

 

 

They catch a break, such as it is, when they overhear someone recounting a story of finding a safety lock on the maintenance door smashed to pieces. They all exchange glances and push through the same door.

It’s not an easy climb, and Cassian is aching all over by the time they reach the forest floor, but.

“Her necklace,” Chirrut says, and points. “The crystal is in this direction.”

“I see the trail,” Baze adds, and takes the lead.

Bodhi is hovering at Cassian’s side, which would be annoying at any other time, but right now seems only practical. The med staff are not going to be happy when they find him gone. He’s lucky – _lucky_ , he thinks grimly – that the destruction of Alderaan has brought in so many cases of shock, a few of self harm and catatonia. The doctors had been too busy to monitor Cassian.

It’s probably half an hour of pushing their way through the damp green leaves before Baze halts. When he turns to face them, his expression is grim. “Careful,” is all he says, but he looks at Cassian.

Cassian leans to look past him and sees Jyn, slumped against a boulder at the edge of a cliff. He swallows, blood running cold. “Yes,” he says.

His eyes move to Chirrut, once more, and the guardian says softly, “You know her loss.”

“I do,” Cassian says.

“Her path is no longer clear.”

He swallows again. “But she’s not alone.”

“None of us are,” Baze tells him.

Bodhi says nothing, just watches him with worried eyes.

 

 

Cassian approaches slowly. Carefully. He doesn’t know why she stopped at the edge of a cliff – _but at least she did stop_ , a voice in the back of his mind says.

“Jyn,” he says, as he gets within arms’ length. He lowers himself into a crouch, feels his back protest, and reaches out to place a hand on her ankle anyway. “Jyn, I’m here.”

She doesn’t react. For a few long moments there’s nothing but the incessant sounds of the rainforest, beetles and birds and the hum of small insects. Just when he’s about to try again she turns her head a little, toward him.

“Jyn,” he says again. “It’s me.”

Her eyes meet his, and he has to hold back the flinch.

“I should have died. I think I was supposed to die on Scarif,” she tells him. “Maybe we all were.”

He draws in a shaky breath. He knows what she means. When he’d heard the stories – Bodhi surviving a grenade, of all things, Chirrut’s insane walk through a gauntlet of blaster fire – yes, he’d thought the same thing.

“I’ve never been a good person,” she says dully. “Never really tried to be. Just survived. Went from one thing to the next. Didn’t think about it much. Whether I deserved to live or die.”

“But we didn’t. Jyn, we didn’t die.”

“But why would I still be here? Why should I still be alive? What’s the point, now? After _this?”_

Cassian’s heart is pounding. What can he even say to that, if she means what he suspects. “Jyn. Where were you going? Where was she?”

Jyn’s face crumples and she turns her head away.

“You were meeting on… Alderaan?” he asks. It’s the only explanation for her reaction, but he has to ask, because he has to know.

“They would have arrived the day before yesterday,” she whispers. “If I’d gone yesterday, I’d have been with them.”

His hand clenches involuntarily. “Don’t,” he pleads. “Jyn, please don’t wish that.”

“Why not? Shouldn’t I have been with her? I’m her _mother_ ,” she grits out, furious and so hurt. “I should have been there, if she had to die it should have been with my arms wrapped around her, it was my right to be with my daughter, she’s just a _baby_ Cassian, she’s _my baby_ -”

And now she’s sobbing, screaming at him and he moves closer, gives her a target because he knows that rage, he recognises it, and she needs this and her fists are hammering on his chest, just her pain and her rage at the unfairness of it all, and his eyes are stinging to think she has lost this too, and he will never know her daughter, a little girl who might have had Jyn’s expressive mouth and her fierce, fierce heart.

“You’re not alone,” he tells her, because it’s all he has. There’s nothing that can make any of this better. It’s not right, it’s not fair, it shouldn’t have happened, not to Jyn, not to anyone.

 

 

_Three Months Earlier_

_Jyn didn’t resist when they clapped restraints around her wrists. There was no point trying to fight her way out now, when they were surrounded and very heavily outnumbered. There’d be time later. Imperial prisons were no picnic, but she’s resourceful and trained and extremely motivated._

_She closed her eyes and tuned out the shouts, the struggles of her fellow smugglers. They’d been betrayed – one of their team had flipped in exchange for immunity – but she had no time to spare for recriminations and accusations. She had to think._

_Her one stroke of luck was that it was clearly local law enforcement handling this. They didn’t know who they’d caught, it wasn’t part of some larger operation run by Imperial command. It was just local officers cracking open a smuggling ring. She’d be processed alongside everyone else, and probably end up in the closest secure location. She pictured where they were, the nearest Imperial prison… Wobani, then._

_Feren will stay put for a week, then when Jyn misses the first checkin, she’ll begin to move Kera through the various locations they’ve agreed on. Three weeks in each location – Outer Rim planet, Outer Rim space station, Mid Rim planet, Colonies planet and then as a last resort – a peaceful Core world. If all that failed, Feren would run to Maz._

_Jyn breathes. She’d been arrested before, and always made her way back. There was no reason for this time to be any different._

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jyn's small family is meant to meet up on Alderaan. Grief at the potential loss of a child is depicted in detail.


	12. Yavin IV (see what I did there)

 

 

He can hear Bodhi breathing shakily behind him, the pilot is crying too, Cassian thinks. At least he doesn’t have to explain it now, the most basic horror that has happened to their Jyn.

After a while the three men draw back just a little, standing like sentinels between the grieving mother and the mass of people further up the mountain. And he is fiercely grateful for their survival, because it will take all of them to pull Jyn through this.

“Come back to the base,” he says, when the worst of her sobbing has ebbed. “Please. Come back with us.”

She shrugs, apathetic.

“Little sister,” Baze says, from just behind Cassian. “Let us help you.”

“Nothing can help me.”

Cassian can’t even argue.

“Nothing matters anymore,” Jyn says dully.

“Come with us, Jyn,” Bodhi urges. Chirrut says nothing. His face is drawn, he’s swaying on his feet, all of his weight resting on something Cassian vaguely recognizes was once part of an X-Wing frame. Like Cassian, he should still be in medical.

Baze moves forward and draws her up, scoops her into his arms. Cassian watches, feeling numb all over except for the heat of pain radiating from his back. The painkillers are wearing off.

He follows Baze and Chirrut, Bodhi at their six, and they make their grim climb back up to the base.

She is staring dully out at the rainforest from the cradle of Baze’s arms and his eyes catch on her face. “Jyn,” he says, just to break the heavy silence, to remind her he is there.

She turns her face toward him, eyes hazy with tears and exhaustion. “Will,” she murmurs, and raises a hand to his face, just out of reach.

Cassian stops, every part of his body locking tight. That word, in that voice, echoes through his head with the certainty of sliding a key into a lock. The _right_ key.

 _“What,”_ he breathes.

Her eyes close and she slumps against Baze’s chest.

She looks so… _small_. Sm-small like Nari was. _Small like Nari_.

He stumbles, falls against Bodhi, who braces against both their weight but Cassian can’t take his eyes off Jyn’s face. The certainty that hits him is unravelling everything the drug did to him, pulling her image up to the front of his mind. The hair is different, her face, too… It’s been _years_ … And Nari had been so young, still with that youthful roundness to her cheeks, but-

By the gods. “It’s you,” he says stupidly. He’d shed so many of the memories of her, forced himself to forget, but there’s a sudden certainty through the haze of pain and grief. It’s her. All these years, and he’s found her again. She’s found him. “Nari,” he murmurs.

Jyn sleeps on, oblivious.

 

 

 

“I thought you were a fighter, Erso.”

It’s Draven. Of course it is. No doubt waiting until Cassian was gone, the most ruthless of her protectors.

Bodhi straightens with his fists clenched, indignant. “She’s just-”

“You can’t tell me that someone raised by Saw Gerrera didn’t have a fallback position and an emergency contingency in case you were separated from one another,” Draven says, ignoring Bodhi. “Ten years with the Partisans, I know you learned something.”

“So?” she says dully

“So you don’t know for certain they were on Alderaan. Things happen, plans are delayed. Check your next location for a meeting, check on whatever other networks you gave them.”

She shakes her head. She _can’t_. She can’t conceive of that particular hope. This isn’t a rebellion, this isn’t a heist. This is her entire world, destroyed by the weapon her father built.

“You’re telling me that the woman who stormed an Imperial installation on Scarif with a only handful of troops is too afraid to go looking? They could well be assuming _you’re_ dead, that you were waiting on Alderaan for them to arrive.”

 _“Go to hell,”_ she bursts out.

“Go looking, Erso,” he tells her. “They’re not dead until you have proof they’re dead. And you’re absolutely ruining morale right now.”

And he stalks away without a backward glance.

Bodhi is fuming, sputtering with the kind of anger that takes you past speech. And Jyn is tired, so tired. Her stomach is churning, and the worst of it is that she knows she’s never going to be able to shake off Draven’s words. He’s right. She has to look. She has to check. She has to _know_.

She pushes upright, limbs like stone, like her heart. “Can we get a ship?” she asks, exhausted beyond belief.

Bodhi stops, staring. “You. You’re-”

“Draven’s right,” she tells him, mouth contorting into something that is more of a snarl than a smile. “I have to check. I have to _know.”_

“I.” Bodhi is staring at her from the other bed, his eyes red and his mouth a downward curl. “I can try.”

She nods, and the door opens, ushering Cassian back into the room.

Bodhi glances between them, then says, “I’ll go see about- that, then.”

Cassian frowns, confused, watches Bodhi’s back all the way out the door.

“We had fallback meeting places,” Jyn tells him, her heart dead in her chest but continuing to beat anyway. “Messages we could send if we were delayed. I need to check. I know there’s no hope but – I have to- I have to check.”

He nods slowly. “All right. I can get you access to a terminal, to check for a message.”

Jyn shrugs. _Stars_ , this is worse. This is worse than the numb enormity of grief. This is like holding a hand into the fire and watching it burn. Curse Draven. Curse him into ten different hells.

“Did something happen?” Cassian asks, and he’s suddenly so close, voice so soft, a hand on Jyn’s knee and his other hand holding a pad. She’s losing time, she thinks dully. Last time she was like this was locked below ground, waiting for Saw and seeing Momma fall, hearing Poppa’s voice.

Jyn doesn’t look up. She doesn’t want to start any trouble. Bodhi will cave and tell Cassian all the details of Draven’s visit the minute the Captain asks, but she isn’t going to waste her energy on it. “I have to know,” she repeats. She bites her lip, leans a little closer to Cassian, and starts navigating her way to the public message board where she and Feren posted their messages.

She swallows as the words load onto the screen. Cassian crowds closer, he’s so warm and familiar, and she wants to lean so badly. Jyn straightens her spine and clenches tears behind her teeth as she clicks through to the Bantha Breeder’s forum, narrows down to Mid-Rim, cross-breeds.

There’s Jyn’s last post, as crystal^shard – _trial commenced_. Letting Feren know she had made contact with the smugglers. And Feren’s reply – _acknowledged_. Jyn had been scooped up by the Imperials the next day, and by the Rebel Alliance two months after that.

There’s a series of updates from Feren as luckypod, and her last post – _attending breeder’s market_

Jyn touches the screen with a shaking hand. “They’d been waiting for me to complete a small smuggling job,” she breathes. “They were on Mydasos in the Outer Rim. When I didn’t get in touch they would have travelled to Raintin space station,” she points to each message, “then on to Moth. After that, three weeks on Cato Neimoidia. That’s what this one means, that they’d landed safely there and were waiting.”

“And after that?” Cassian asked.

She swallowed hard. Kriff. Oh _kriff_ , there was no new entry. “They wait three weeks, then move to Alderaan.”

“And on Alderaan they would post another message?”

She nodded. Raised her eyes to Cassian. Her stomach lurched. “It doesn’t mean anything,” she said hoarsely. “They may not have had time to post a message before- She hasn’t posted anything to say they were delayed on Cato Neimoidia either.”

 

 

Cassian grips her hands. They’re cold and trembling just slightly. “Then we go and we find out. Can you post something here they will understand?”

She nods, then shoves at him violently, pushes past and runs for the fresher. He closes his eyes at the sound of her being violently sick, and just waits. Something has happened in the few minutes he was gone. She won’t tell him, but he’ll get it out of Bodhi later.

Water runs, and she appears in the doorway. “Yes,” she says hoarsely. “I can. Yes.”

He crosses to her side and helps her back to the bed, half-lifts her onto it. There’s nothing he can say. She’ll post her message and there’ll be an answer, or there won’t. The Captain Andor part of him is calculating times, thinking about what would be happening in Alderaan’s part of space, right now. There would be an incalculable amount of debris from the planet itself, probably damaged ships that had just taken off from the planet and ships that had been about to land. The neighbouring planets and space station would be overwhelmed with refugees. It would be chaos.

If Jyn’s daughter has by some miracle survived, is perhaps still en route to Alderaan, they might now be stranded somewhere that was never a part of their plans. The message board is their best chance, now.

Jyn’s hand is shaking, and she finally slams a fist into her own thigh, closes her eyes and sinks back onto the bed. He can see her visibly willing herself into control, but the act of logging herself in to the account has evidently taken the last of her reserves.

“Jyn,” he whispers. “What should it say?”

She covers her mouth with a shaking hand.

 _“Seeking Corellian pear tree,”_ she says, and then she is crying again.

He can’t help it, Cassian leans down to engulf her in his arms. She must have sung that rhyme to her daughter many, many times. Every child knew it, Outer Rim, Imperial or Hutt planet.

“I’m here,” he tells her. “You’re not alone, Jyn. I’m here.”

Face buried in his chest, she cries herself to sleep, and when she is finally resting Cassian sends out the forlorn little message, steeling himself against the creeping onset of hope. Grief is a terrible thing to bear, but hope is the cruellest thing of all, he knows.

She wakes once that night. He’s curled up beside her, despite the med droid’s objections about his recovery. She shifts in his arms and he jerks awake, biting back a wince at the pain in his spine.

“Jyn,” he murmurs. “You awake?”

There’s silence for a long time. “You told me. You said, _welcome home.”_

He nods.

“I’ve never had that,” she murmurs. “A home. Couldn’t give it to Kera, either.”

He hesitates. He’s not sure how much talk of her daughter Jyn can take, but he can’t let that statement go unchallenged. “Has she been safe? Warm? Fed? As happy as you could make her?”

Jyn is nodding before he finishes.

“Then you’ve done as much as you could do, Jyn,” he tells her. She doesn’t say anything, and after a moment, he goes on, awkward.

“This is the world we were given – when we were just kids ourselves. It’s not settled, it’s not easy, and a lot of the time it’s not safe. But you didn’t cause any of that, and you’ve protected her as best you can.”

Her face crumples, then, and he feels it like a punch to the heart. “Sshhh,” he soothes, “shh, _cariño,_ I’m here, I’m here, it’s all right.” The words just slip out and he feels as stupid as it’s possible to feel, but she doesn’t strike out or blame him. Just cries quietly into his chest until sleep takes her again.

Cassian lies there for a long time, trying not to obsess about the missing plans, the Death Star’s next likely targets, Jyn’s small daughter, Alderaan, all the friends he’s lost in the past few days. He’s in no shape to do anything about any of it, though he’s not going to let Rogue One leave him behind tomorrow, that’s for kriffing sure.

 

 

 

_Three Weeks Earlier_

 

“ _Where is Mama?” Keren demands, pouting. “She_ said _she’d be here.”_

 _“She will be here when she can, you know that,” Feren replied. “_ Kshhh _, do not fret.” She ran a hand over the tangle of Kera’s hair and thanked_ M'dweshuu _that the faces of her kind were hard for humans to interpret. She was beginning to feel sick with worry. Liana had been gone before, sometimes for long periods. But never before had she gone so long with no word of reassurance, no explanation of the delay._

_Well. They had a few days left, still, before they needed to move again. She would check the message board once Kera was asleep, and in the morning she would begin to look for a ship heading toward the Core systems._

_“All, will be well, little one,” Feren crooned. “_ Kshhh, kshhhh, _time to rest now.”_

_She sat for a long time, waiting for Kera to be calm enough to sleep, and tried to focus only on the tasks ahead of her. Find a ship. Secure the necessary credits. Switch their scandocs for the top quality ones they had kept aside for venturing into the Core._

_At least on Alderaan there was little crime, and no Imperial presence. On Alderaan she would be able to relax, just a little, and try to puzzle out what has gone wrong._

_Liana, where are you?_

 

 


	13. Fedalle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm afraid I'll be out of touch for about four days following this post. I know it's a bit cliffhanger-y, so I'm going to post the first few lines of the next chapter in the chapter notes at the end. Hopefully that will get you guys through the weekend!  
> Thanks for all the comments. I read them all.

Bodhi has a ship waiting for them, a small, utterly unremarkable cruiser that’s light and quick and has no weapons of any kind. They file on board in silence, and this time the mood is even grimmer than when they were setting off to Scarif for almost certain death and nearly-as-certain mission failure.

They’re in the air and calculating the hyperspace jump when Jyn says suddenly, “Draven just let us take a ship. He didn’t try to stop you?”

Bodhi flicks a quick glance her way. “No, he uh. He actually had it ready and waiting.”

She blinks, that unlikely event penetrating through the fog of grief and pain.

Cassian had heard from an indignant Bodhi what happened, what Draven had said to Jyn, and he hesitates for a long moment before he says quietly, “Draven had a wife. Three children.”

He has everyone’s attention now. “Debris from an Imperial destroyer crashed into their planet, destroyed their homestead while Draven was in town at the markets. A friend flew him back but… it was just. Scorched earth. There was contamination from the experimental weapons the ship had carried. No-one was even allowed to land there. He joined the Alliance that day.”

Everyone is staring at him.

“He learned years later that his youngest daughter had been in the forest when it happened, not at home. She was injured, but managed to survive in the forest for months until.” He swallowed. “Until winter came. She dragged herself through the wasteland of wreckage for days until she reached a small town. They tried to help her, but. She died of a fever before they could even identify her.”

Cassian licked his lips. “I was there the day he found out. He’d been a hard man before, but-” He shook his head.

 _“Kriff,”_ Baze breathes. Chirrut’s head is down, sightless eyes focused on the floor of the ship.

Cassian’s mouth twists, and he half-shrugs. It’s awful, of course it is, but... Draven’s story is one of a hundred, of thousands across the galaxy. “No-one joins a Rebellion without some powerful motivation.”

Bodhi takes an audible breath, shakes his head and makes the jump to light speed.

 

 

The two most likely places for Jyn’s daughter and her companion are Alderaan’s neighbours, Fedalle or Caamas. Cassian has contacts on Fedalle, so they agree to start there. They’re approaching the planet’s surface when Jyn stirs out of the daze she’s been in. “If they’re here, we’d usually – they’d usually choose any hotel that has a colour in the name, and if there’s more than one, the closest to the spaceport.”

There’s no room at the spaceport. Fedalle is crammed full of ships that have landed in emergency conditions, and even more like their own, who have come in desperate search for any survivors, or to offer aid. They are forced to set down in grassland outside the main city, one of scores of ships with nowhere else to go.

They hike for almost an hour before they reach the edge of town, and there they pause, gathering themselves for the next part. The hard part.

“Fallback?” Cassian asks. Because if there was ever a time that they may not be able to get into their first choice of accommodation… this is it. It’s likely to be chaos in town.

“Show up at the easternmost park of the city at mid morning and mid afternoon every day.”

Cassian nods and opens his mouth to suggest-

“You’re not coming,” Jyn says. He blinks at her.

“Don’t think for a second I don’t see how stiffly you’re holding yourself,” she says, flat. “The walk from the ship to here just about finished you off. You wait here. There’s enough of us that we c- we can split up and check the two locations,” she manages to finish, voice wobbling.

He wants to argue, but the fact of the matter is, his left leg is mostly numb, and there’s a deep throbbing burn in his upper back that tells him he left medical far too soon. He’d be a liability, at this point.

“You can monitor comms,” she says, and folds her arms. He could almost smile, except she’s so obviously using this to distract herself from the overwhelming grief and worry. They’d checked the message boards this morning, there’d been no answering message from Jyn’s friend, Feren.

He inclines his head in agreement and changes the subject. “How will the other team recognize them?” Cassian asks. He knows without asking Jyn would not carry any holos of her daughter, nothing to give away her existence.

“Feren is a green Nikto,” Jyn says. “Kera is… she’ll probably be disguised as a Jawa.” She holds a hand up off the floor of the ship to indicate height.

Cassian’s eyebrows shoot up. If she’s only ever accompanied her daughter in public in disguise… That would explain a lot, actually. How the Alliance never had a clue there was a child in Jyn’s life, for one.

Bodhi says, “A Nikto and a Jawa. That’ll be enough for us to recognise them, I think.”

 _Bless him,_ Cassian thinks, for his steadfast faith. He doesn’t want to think about what lies ahead if this search is fruitless.

 

 

Jyn takes a deep breath and tries to focus. Pretend it’s just a mission. No guns necessary, no more than is ever necessary, anyway. They’re just… making contact, that’s all. She licks her lips and tries to think how this will go down.

“Feren only knows me as Liana Hallik. And. We have a codeword,” Jyn tells them. She can feel her face getting hot even as she tells them, “Benpo cream.” Cassian freezes.

She can’t look at him. She can’t. _Kriff_ , she’s such an idiot, why didn’t she realize what it would mean, bringing him along?

She can feel his eyes on her, but she pushes it down, refusing to look back. She can’t. Right now she just _can’t_. She can sense the moment he decides to let it go, and she’s so kriffing _thankful_ that he seems to understand. She genuinely doesn’t have the capacity to think about anything other than finding Kera right now. Jyn takes a deep breath and tunes back in to what the others are saying.

“Because if you come with me they will panic and run,” Chirrut is telling Baze sweetly. “If Jyn finds them, they will recognize her, so you won’t seem as intimidating. Bodhi and I are strangers, we need to be as unthreatening as possible. What could be less threatening than a blind man, and-”

“And a man who looks like he’d blow away in a strong breeze,” Bodhi finishes, half-smiling.

“Enough talking,” Jyn snaps out. “Let’s just _go._ ”

Cassian gives her a look, but instead of calling her on the false bravado, he reaches out a careful hand and wraps it around her wrist. _“La esperanza muere al ultimo,”_ he murmurs, low and soft.

She blinks at him. “What does that mean?”

He gives a little headshake. “I’m sending my hope with you, that’s all.” He squeezes once, then lets her hand slide through his fingers. “I’ll be waiting, Jyn. No matter what happens.”

 

 

_Two Years Ago_

_Feren knows this cannot last forever._

_Liana saved her life. Not only that, but gave her a way to remain free of the Hutt. Liana asks for nothing from Feren but her contribution to the table, and to keep Kera from harm’s way._

_But Liana has secrets. She, too, is in hiding. It is why she understands Feren so well. Both of them are looking over their shoulder for that which they fear._

_One day, one of their secrets will catch up to them. Either the Hutt, or Liana’s enemies will find them._

_Feren doesn’t know what will happen, she only knows that she will do whatever it takes to protect Kera and Liana. They have bought her years of living – truly_ living _. Not as a thing. Not as a slave. But as herself, with thoughts of her own, developing skills and with the chance to learn that touch does not have to be dreaded and feared._

_When that day comes, Feren will die gladly, with a free heart. And Liana and Kera will not forget her That alone is more than she would have ever dreamed of in her life._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sneak Peek of Ch 14:
> 
> “Benpo cream,” Chirrut says quickly, and the hurrying footsteps stop, then shuffle.  
> “That’s Mama’s funny-”  
> “What did you say?”  
> “I’m a friend of your mother’s,” he says, unable to resist focusing on the Force-bright soul before him, a shard of familiar Khyber hanging at her neck.


	14. Fedalle II

 

Chirrut is grateful for Bodhi’s steady presence at his side as they make their way to the easternmost park in the city. It’s not the same as walking with Baze, of course – who feels more like a mountain than a man, so solid is he. But Bodhi walks calmly with Chirrut, flinching now and then from something Chirrut cannot see, but is likely yet another grieving refugee, judging by the sounds of weeping that come in and out of focus.

“She has to be all right,” Bodhi says, but there’s guilt in his words.

“I hope so,” Chirrut says, but doesn’t add anything else. He understands what Bodhi doesn’t wish to say, that it seems wrong to be so fervently hoping Jyn is spared grief when it’s almost certain no-one else around them will be spared.

“Nearly there,” Bodhi says, and his steps slow almost imperceptibly. Afraid of what he might find. Or not find.

Chirrut finds himself holding his breath. And then round a corner and-

 _There._ The crystal calls to him, and he has to lock his knees against the weakness that comes from overwhelming relief.

“Stars above,” Bodhi says, voice very low and shaky. He must be staring, too obviously, because there’s a sudden burst of swift footsteps on their right.

 _“Benpo cream,”_ Chirrut calls quickly, and the hurrying footsteps stop, then shuffle.

“That’s Mama’s funny-”

 _“What_ did you say?”

“I’m a friend of your mother’s,” he says, unable to resist focusing on the Force-bright soul before him, a shard of familiar Khyber hanging at her neck. Then he turns his face toward the wary, terrified soul behind. “Liana brought a few of us with her to look for you, both of you. She said you’d know I was an ally if I told you _benpo cream_.”

There’s silence.

“My name is Chirrut Imwe.”

“I’m Kera,” a little voice pipes, almost drowned out by the shushing coming from her adult companion.

Chirrut smiles, just a little. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, young lady. You shine as bright as your mother.”

“How do I know she’s-” the voice cuts off.

“She was delayed getting to Alderaan,” Chirrut tells the woman. The voice is shaking with stress and fear. “She thought the two of you had been lost there ,” and he can feel the smile fall away from his face. “She’ll be relieved to know you’re well.”

There’s another long pause.

At his side, Bodhi is crouching, no doubt focusing on the child. “My name is Bodhi,” he says, that soft voice an invitation. “I haven’t known your mum for long, but I know she’s really worried about you.”

“Please,” Chirrut says, focusing on the Nikto now. “Your name is Feren, yes? Please, at least walk with us toward the shipyard. She was checking the hotels, but she will be on her way back by now.” _She is sick with terror and grief,_ he doesn’t add. He can almost smell it coming off the Nikto – she, too, has spent the past few days thinking their small family unit was irretrievably shattered.

“We will. We will walk,” she says finally. “Kera, stay by me and hold my hand.”

Chirrut half-bows, and offers a smile. The horrible twist in his heart, in his gut, ever since Alderaan – ever since Jedha, if he’s honest – lifts a little at the thought of what this means for Jyn. And for the Captain, too, if he’s right.

Which he is. No matter what Baze says.

Those two burn so bright it’s like a coaxium explosion every time they meet. Whether they are fighting over the Rebellion or propping up one another’s wounded bodies, there is nothing easy, and nothing boring about these two. Perhaps it explains how two such people – neither of them particularly powerful, rich or gifted – could have such a huge impact on a galaxy-wide war.

It pleases Chirrut, to watch this small story unfold around them. Two people, loyal and strong, finding one another despite the years of separation. It reminds him of Baze, and their own thorny path to finding one another.

He falls into step beside Bodhi, their precious cargo following behind, and feels a genuine smile spread across his face for the first time in many days.

 

 

 

Jyn’s knees give out when she sees that tiny form trundling along behind Bodhi and Chirrut.

 _“Kera,”_ she gasps, and hits the deck, hard.

Baze is there immediately, his big hand engulfing her shoulder, but she can only kneel there and shake, arms reaching out desperately, and she sees Feren’s head lift, a sound coming from the Nitko that Jyn has never heard before, and then they’re running, and Kera calls _Momma_ , and Jyn thinks, _well, the secret’s out now,_ and she couldn’t care less.

Jyn is sobbing, huge ugly breaths as Kera reaches her, and she can’t control it, can’t pull it back even a little.

“Momma I _missed_ you,” Kera is saying as Feren falls to her knees at their sides, and Jyn tips her face up to meet her friend’s eyes, wants to reach out a hand but genuinely can’t make herself let go of her daughter.

“Feren,” she gasps.

“My friend, it has been too long,” Feren tells her, that normally unreadable face twitching and her shoulders drawn up tight.

“I’ve missed you too,” Jyn tells her. “Oh Feren, thank you. _Thank_ you.”

Those familiar green arms fold around them both, and Jyn sees past Feren’s shoulder as Chirrut grins, face split almost in two with it, pounds the ground once with the makeshift staff Baze found among the scraps of Yavin.

Bodhi is crying again, she thinks, she can hear the sniffling, and then, so quietly she almost misses it, from behind Jyn hears a usually skeptical voice murmur, “Thank the Force,” and she almost chokes on a half-laugh. Oh, _Baze._

 _Chirrut will be unbearable now,_ she thinks. _No way he didn’t hear that._

 

 

_Seven Months Earlier_

_Cassian was exceedingly drunk by the time Draven found him. Not sloppy – none of them can afford that. But he was almost far gone enough to start a bar fight just to let out some of the ugliness in his heart._

_“She knew going in-”_

_“I know.” Cassian said. He’s not insubordinate, exactly. But his tone was clipped, short like he would never normally offer his commanding officer._

_It might be a sign of Draven’s own regrets that he didn’t comment on Cassian’s tone. Then again, the older man was the one who taught Cassian how to choose his battles. And the Force knew, the man had ample experience of coaxing regretful or guilty or scared agents back into the field. He knew there was a rhythm to these things, and that now was not the time to strike._

_Kriff, Cassian was so_ sick _of this war. Of his whole life, really. Nothing but lies and manipulations and deceit._

 _“What are we even_ doing _this for?” he mumbled, and regretted it immediately._

_Those are the questions you Do. Not. Ask. Not in this line of work._

_He’d always thought it was a hilarious juxtaposition that the ones who do the dirty work, the ones who lie and cheat and steal and kill without a second thought… have to be the ones who trust that it’s somehow worth it. That the dark deeds they commit will mean for someone else, out there, a life of safety, or ignorance, or kindness. Trust in a fairytale of a better, fairer world._

_Draven didn’t answer him. There was no answer to give, on nights like this._

_Seventeen years old. Cassian had recruited her himself. The daughter of a highly placed Imperial official – it had been too good to pass up._

_But for her to be turned over to the authorities by her own_ brother _… He had earned a promotion out of it and was wearing his new pips before the body was even cold._

_Cassian threw back another drink and hunched deeper into his jacket._

_He_ hated _this karkling war._

 

 

 


	15. Fedalle III

 

 

 _Thank kriff for Rogue One_ , Jyn has a moment to think. Not for the first time.

She’s been stumbling along blindly, arms wrapped so tight around Kera, Feren pressed all along her side, talking in fragments and choking back tears. She genuinely could have walked up the ramp and onto an Imperial Destroyer for all the notice she’d taken of where they were.

Then she begins to calm, aware that she is starting to worry Kera. Takes a few deep breaths and lifts her head up from where she’s been pressing her face to Kera’s hair.

“He’s not answering,” she hears Bodhi say. And then, quietly, “Can’t we have _any_ karkling luck?”

 _We used it all up on Scarif,_ she thinks, and says, “What’s wrong.” but even as she says it she knows. There’s only one ‘he’ who isn’t currently with them. _Curse it all,_ Jyn thinks, _can’t we have_ any _karkling luck?_

Then, shivering, she clutches Kera close all over again. She’s holding her luck, right here in her arms. So much more fortune than all those other families on Jedha, and Naboo, on Fest and Lah’mu. On countless other planets and space stations and ships ground to dust under the Imperial boot. And now Alderaan. She and Baze had walked amongst those families today as they searched, grief hanging like a pall of fog over the surface of the entire planet.

“He said he would have to find somewhere inconspicuous to wait,” Chirrut says, calm as ever.

“But he wouldn’t have travelled too far,” Bodhi argues. “He could barely walk as it was.”

“We should keep heading toward the ship,” Baze says, voice flat. “It’s the only place he knows of to find us. Perhaps he decided to start back toward it, so as not to slow us down.”

That does sound like Cassian. Jyn takes a deep breath and forces herself to put Kera down. A human woman carrying a Jawa is an odd sight, and she doesn’t want to be memorable, even though this planet is full of far more memorable sights right now. They keep passing small groups of people openly wailing their grief, or clustering around screens scrolling up with names of survivors – so few names. Somehow the wailing is more bearable than the solitary people staring into space as if they are just waiting for death to claim them.

She shivers again. “Baze is right. We have to keep going.”

 

 

Back on board the ship, there’s no sign of Cassian. Jyn can feel the clutch around her heart, the worry, but she helps to settle Feren and Kera into the most comfortable seats on board, and hopes against hope to hear Cassian’s footsteps at any moment.

“Got him,” Bodhi says from the comms panel, and Jyn is standing before she’s even really thought about it.

“Cassian?”

“Things are deteriorating over here,” Cassian says. His voice is coming through rushed, there’s a lot of noise in the background. “I had to go deeper into town to find an inconspicuous place to wait. But something’s about to happen, I can feel it. Don’t wait for me to get to the ship. Get off-planet. Now.”

Jyn surges forward, her arms still full of Kera. “What? No!”

“I can make my own way to-”

“We are _not_ leaving you-”

“Jyn,” suddenly his voice is low and serious. “You’re carrying precious cargo. I can read a crowd better than most, and this is a planet full of refugees and angry, grieving people. Something’s bubbling to the surface, and you _do not_ want to be here when it finally blows. I know people here, I can get myself to the next system-”

“Belnar,” Bodhi breaks in to say, his fingers flying over the ship’s maps. “Get to Belnar, then at least you’ll be heading away from the Core.”

“I can do that,” Cassian says without hesitation.

“Cassian-”

“I can do that. Jyn. Do _not_ linger here. I will see you on Belnar, I swear. We talked about this, you know where I’ll go.”

She stands for a long moment, biting her lip.

“Jyn.”

She looks over at Kera. Thinks again of the cold that had enveloped her on Yavin when she’d heard the news, the way she’d wanted everything to be over, how life had seemed so pointless.

She has her miracle. And life has not taught her to expect miracles. “All right,” she says, reluctant. Cassian is right. She has to make Kera her priority, no matter how cruel it seems to leave him behind.

“I’ll see you in a day or so.”

“You’d better, _Will,_ ” she tells him.

In his smile she can hear all the things they’ve been waiting to say to one another. “I’m signing off. Stay safe for me- _all_ of you.”

“You too.”

And then the transmission ends. She lifts her head and meets the curious gazes. “You heard him,” she says, and her voice only wobbles a little. _Cassian_. _Will_. “Let’s get out of here.”

Bodhi gets them off-planet without too much delay, while Jyn and Feren fuss quietly over Kera, soothing her quietly to sleep as they’ve been doing for years. She grips her Momma’s hand tightly, and Jyn stays crouched over her, feeling like she’ll never have long enough to look at the precious creature before her.

Finally, the ache in her back forces her to slide her hand free and she turns to sit on the ship’s floor, back braced against the wall. She glances across to Feren, who is, she sees with shock, fast asleep as well, tucked in the corner. The Nikto must be exhausted from worry, consumed with the massive responsibility of making the decisions that would decide if they lived or died.

There’s so much to tell her friend. Well. It’ll keep.

Jyn rolls her head to the side again and her gaze lights on Chirrut’s face. He’s – well, looking at her is the wrong way to put it, obviously, but-

“What?” she says, but quietly, not barked out aggressively as she would have done only a week ago.

A slow smile crosses his face. He doesn’t say a thing, but she finds her face is growing hot, and she huffs and looks away, hears his low laugh in response. _Damned Force-sensitive gossip,_ she thinks, but she knows she’s smiling, and at Chirrut’s side Baze lets out a rusty chuckle.

“They say absence makes the heart grow fonder,” the older man observes just as Bodhi appears in the doorway, and Jyn throws a ration bar at the warrior while Chirrut snickers.

“Um,” Bodhi says. “I get the feeling I’m missing something.” His curious eyes turn toward Jyn, and she shakes her head.

“You two are terrible,” she tells them, and closes her eyes, feigning sleep. She’s not going to tell Bodhi before she’s actually, properly told Cassian, for kriff’s sake.

“All will be revealed, Bodhi Rook,” Chirrut intones, tone solemn and lips twitching.

“O-kay then,” Bodhi says, and takes a step back. “I’m uh, going to go back to piloting now. I assume it’s better to take an indirect route to Belnar, just in case?”

Jyn nods, forgetting that she’s meant to be sleeping.

“Right,” Bodhi says. “Scenic route it is.”

 

 

 

_Three Days Earlier_

_The bacta soak had helped. Cassian knew that, logically. The tearing, ripping pain in his side and his back had receded._

_But slowly._ Very _kriffing slowly._

_He was barely awake. They probably thought he was unconscious, judging by the low conversation Jyn and Baze were holding on the other side of the room. But feigning insensibility in the face of pain was a skill every spy learned early, if they wanted to survive._

_He focused on that one comforting thought, that Jyn was there, close by. That knowledge seemed to expand to fill his entire world, right now._

_They did it. They_ did _it._

_The plans were transmitted. The Alliance fleet appeared in the skies above Scarif, and Rogue One had managed the near-impossible._

_He felt ridiculous tears sting his eyes. He could almost let them flow, let them wash away some of the stain of what he’d done over the years. One last ridiculous throw of the dice, a desperate attempt to believe that he could make up for some of it, balance it out somehow._

_He could almost envy Melshi and the others. They were at peace now, no more nightmares invading their sleep every night, no more wondering when this fight would ever be over._

_But it wasn’t the end for him, because his team wouldn’t allow it._

Rogue One. _A smile tugged at the corner of Cassian’s mouth, and he let himself slip into the blackness._

 

 


	16. Belnar

 

It had mostly been to distract Jyn, she thinks, but on the trip from Yavin IV to Fedalle, Cassian had made them talk through all the possible ways things could go wrong, backup plans and patterns for finding each other.

And so, as agreed, they land at the Belnar shipyard and head south for ten minutes, then identify the nearest cantina. There’s a strip of drinking establishments, so that actually should have been simple. Only problem being they’re all closed. The entire city is hushed and subdued, which is unnerving, to say the least. Jyn is genuinely starting to panic and then she sees a hastily scrawled sign and realizes they’ve declared a day of mourning for the loss of Alderaan, and the businesses have closed as a sign of respect.

“Where would he go?” Baze says.

“He’d have started here,” Jyn says, slowly turning as she spoke. With everything unexpectedly closed, though… there really isn’t anywhere he could wait and stay inconspicuous. “Lets… walk out from here in a grid and see what we find.”

“Can I suggest we begin in that direction,” Chirrut says. Jyn glances at him, sees the ghost of a smile on his face and feels the tension in her chest unwind a little. She glances down at Kera, her little face obscured by the hood of her disguise, though they’ve left off the face mask this time. _She’s here. My baby’s really here, and soon we’ll all be together._ Jyn turns in the direction Chirrut had indicated, feeling like she’s about to vibrate out of her skin.

Cassian has taken refuge in a park, huddling in his jacket against the chill winds. She spotted him first, his body almost swallowed up by the line of a tree trunk. Once more waiting in the shadows, where he’s lived for so long. She sees him go still when he spots them, and she knows what she has to do next.

Her feet stop. “Kera,” Jyn whispers. “Honey. Do you see the man there, under the tree? He’s a friend of mine. He’s the man we can here to find. He helped me to find you again.”

Her trusting little face tips up toward Jyn’s, then swings toward Cassian, who has frozen, suddenly. He’s spotted them. On impulse, Jyn crouches down beside Kera and gently draws her hood down and away, letting her tumble of dark hair spill free, her face come into view.

Cassia steps out into the weak winter sunlight.

Jyn can’t take her eyes off him.

Cassian, on the other hand, can’t take his eyes off Kera. He paces forward slowly, one foot after the other, slow, so steady, getting closer until, uncharacteristically, he stumbles.

He’s pale, so pale, eyes huge and wet as he stares down at his daughter.

Jyn’s been so scared to tell him. So sure she would never find the right words to explain. But she hadn’t ever needed to. One look at Kera and Cassian knows.

He gets slowly to his knees, still several arms-length away.

“Kera,” Jyn said softly, “This is Cassian Andor.”

He lifts his eyes to Jyn, and the look is full of emotions, too many to name.

“This is your father,” Jyn finishes, giving him a tremulous smile. “I told you I’d tell him if I ever found him again didn’t I?” Behind her she hears a choked noise she recognises as coming from Feren, and realizes that though she’d tried explaining the prison and the breakout and some of the Rebellion stuff, Jyn hadn’t told Feren, on the ship, that she’d found him again.

Cassian raises a shaking hand to his mouth. His breath is coming fast and erratic.

“Poppa?” Kera says, turning to Jyn in question. “This is my Poppa?”

Jyn smiled at her. “Yes, he is.” She drops her voice into a confiding whisper. “And I think he needs a hug.”

Warm-hearted as ever, Kera trundles forward, arms out, like it was just that simple. How on earth Jyn has raised such a sunny-natured child, she will never know. Perhaps Cassian’s side of the family was naturally happy and optimistic. Perhaps Jyn would have been, if the Empire had afforded her the chance to find out. Or perhaps she gets it from Feren.

Cassian lets out a soft gasp as Kera reaches him, and reaches out to her on instinct. Her little arms lift to go around his neck and he squeezes his eyes shut, turns his face into her neck, hiding. His arms close gently around his daughter for the first time, so carefully.

Jyn bites her lip. Behind her she can hear some wordless murmur pass from Chirrut to Baze and back again. Jyn reaches out blindly and Feren’s hand catches hers.

Finally Kera’s arms loosen and Cassian leans back immediately in response. It will take time before he’s confident of his welcome.

“Kera,” Cassian says, voice rougher than Jyn had ever heard it. “It’s so good to meet you.” Then, softer, he says, “ _Mija_. You look just like my sister.”

“You have a sister?” Kera’s eyes would be wide, excited, Jyn knew. She loves the idea of a bigger family. Jyn feels herself slump a little, thinking of her own father, the loss so recently suffered. She already knows without asking that Cassian’s story is no happier than hers.

His lips press together. “I’m sorry, _nene_. She died a long time ago.”

For a moment they just watch one another, and then Kera’s little hand comes up to pat his face. “You’re sad. Momma is sad, sometimes, when she misses her own Momma and Poppa.”

Cassian swallows and nods, looks up again at Jyn.

She gives him a soft, sad smile and moves over to crouch with them. The moment she’s by his side Cassian clutches at her hand, squeezing hard. Kera looks from one to the other, eyes flicking side to side, down to their joined hands, then back up again.

“Shall we go back to the ship?” Jyn says. “Get warm?”

Kera nods, which is answer enough for both of them.

 

 

_Three Hours Earlier_

_Feren slumped against the side of the ship and watched the unfamiliar faces warily._

_The blind man, Chirrut, is leaning into the one built like a barrel of ale. That one would be scary if it weren’t for the soft light in his eyes as he watches Liana and Kera. The girl had finally settled into sleep on the long bench, her head pillowed on a folded up blanket, someone’s jacket draped over her. Liana sat and stroked her head gently, face awed and wondering._

_The thin one, Bohdi, was apparently the pilot. He’d vanished, with a quick smile, and got them in the air without delay, leaving only the worried line between Liana’s eyes to show that anything had gone wrong._

_Except… she’s not Liana, apparently, or not with this group. Jyn, he’d called her - the one on the radio who’d told them to leave him behind. He’d been firm about it, and Feren had to agree. The further they got Kera from the graveyard of Alderaan, the better._

_She sucked in a quick breath, feeling the memory all over again like a punch, the whole-body shock of it. The ship, emerging from lightspeed after days of detours and delays-_

_She’d come so close to abandoning their paid passage and finding another ship._

_Feren bends forward over her knees, her nose-membrane automatically spreading out in reaction, as if she were caught in a sandstorm. So close they’d come to death – she might have led Kera to her death-_

_“Feren,” Liana said, suddenly crouched at her side, close. “Feren, talk to me.”_

_“The ship – our ship was delayed,” she choked out. “The captain kept making excuses. I was going to find another ship, a faster ship. We’d have been on Alderaan if I’d-”_

_“But you didn’t. And you had no way of knowing.”_

_“How could such a thing happen?” Feren burst out. “There were rumours of the Empire-”_

_“Yes,” Liana said, and her voice sounded terrible. “It was the Empire. They have a new weapon. They call it the Death Star.”_

_“And it can do that?” Feren asked, aghast._

_Jyn nodded, mouth working hard. “I saw them use it,” she said. “Twice. They destroyed Jedha city, and an Imperial installation. But this – Alderaan was the first time they’d used its full power.”_

_“There is no defeating them now,” Feren said. “No-one can stand against such a weapon.”_

_Jyn’s hand clenched hard on hers. “Perhaps,” she said, voice low and rough. “But it’s possible… there may be… hope.”_

 

 


	17. In flight II

 

Once they’re all back on the ship, Cassian leans forward and drops his head into his hands, though his eyes keep flickering to Kera. She is distracted by a holovid Bodhi had apparently bartered for while he waited with the ship, and Jyn is a little grateful for the breathing space.

“Cassian?” Jyn asks, alarmed. His face had grown tighter and more set as they’d walked back to the ship, desite the awed way his eyes had stayed fixed on Kera. “Is it your back?”

“I checked in while I was waiting for you. Got a coded message from Draven,” he tells the floor. He tilts his head, looks up to meet Jyn’s eyes as he says, “The Princess brought the plans to Yavin.”

“What,” Bodhi says, his voice high and wavering with shock. “They-what?”

Jyn sits down hard.

“They found the Death Star plans?” Baze asks, sounding hopeful for the first time.

“But.”

And now Cassian looks down at the floor again. She puts a hand on his knee. She’d been so consumed by the thought of losing Kera, somehow she’d lost sight of the Death Star.

“The Empire had placed a tracker on their ship. They didn’t catch it until after they’d landed-”

“No.” Jyn says.  Her fingers tighten, nails biting into Cassian’s leg. _“No.”_

“They were scrambling their fighters for an assault when he sent the message,” Cassian says. His mouth twists. “And everyone else for an evacuation.”

Chirrut sits back slowly, staring into the distance. “Not another,” he says, very quietly. “Merciful Force, not _again_.”

Bodhi passes a hand over his face, closes his eyes. Baze turns his face away, tension in every line of his body.

Cassia shakes his head, helpless. “There’s nothing we can do now. Only wait, and see…”

“See if the plans were worth it,” Jyn says hollowly. Stars, they price they’d paid for those plans. _Please, papa, please be right_.

They all sit in silence, Kera and Feren watching surreptitiously from the corner. They may not be hearing the conversation, but they can tell nothing good is happening.

There’s a long silence, then Cassian closes his eyes and lets out an explosive breath, clearly thinking things through. “Ord Cestus,” Cassian says quietly. “We could wait there. For-” his voice falters. “For word. It’s not so close we’d be risking Imperial attention, but we’ll hear something.”

Bodhi just nods. “Ord Cestus,” he says. Jyn could swear she hears him mumbling _I’m the pilot_ as he walks toward the cockpit, but she leaves it alone. They all have their ways of coping, in these strange days of nightmares made real.

 

 

 

 

 

_Two Days Earlier_

_Cassian dreams._

_In some part of his mind he knows he’s in the bacta tank. The feeling of suspension is unmistakable._

_But another, stronger part of his mind places him on Kafrene._

_He’s talking with Tivik. A man he’s known, a man he’s cultivated for years. A source straight to Saw Gerrera, but also a jovial man with a troubled conscience. When Saw’s actions go too far, when the Partisans caused more trouble than they’re worth, Tivik found a way to balance his loyalties. Personal loyalty to Saw, yes, but an overriding loyalty to anyone who opposed the Empire._

_Cassian liked him far more than was sensible, considering he was an asset. But it was hard not to like a man who could so good-naturedly lose at cards, and never hold a grudge. A man who risked the wrath of a paranoid Saw Gerrera. A man who never lost sight of their true enemy._

_“There was a girl here, for years. Jyn. Saw never told anyone her last name. But I heard something, once.” Tivik had hesitated, deep in his cups but not completely lost to reason. “She was just a kid, understand? A teenager by the time she took off, but- when she first came to Saw. She wouldn’t have even been ten years old.”_

_“You heard something?” Cassian asked in the dream, just as he had all those years ago, when he’d first gotten a tip from Tivik about a girl called Jyn._

_“I think her parents were Imperials,” Tivik said, voice very low. “Maybe they defected, I don’t know. Can’t think why else Saw would put himself out for their kid, though. But he was careful to keep her safe. Taught her to fight, trained her in escape and evade. Kept her close.” Then he shrugged. “Of course, she ran off the first chance she got, anyway, did Jyn. Guess he kept her too close – teenagers don’t exactly appreciate a short leash, you know?”_

Jyn _.  Cassian had tucked the name away for looking into later.  Because Tivik had been right. It was odd for Saw to show interest in a specific child. Saw had no objections to child soldiers – like the Alliance, the Partisans had to be pragmatic about the angry orphans who came their way. But the personal touch made Cassian wonder if Saw had known the parents. The Imperial parents._

_He’ll do some digging, when he’s back on base. See who Saw had been working with during that time frame – if anyone his smuggler friends knew ended up working for the Empire, perhaps unwillingly._

_In his memory, Tivik is being perfectly agreeable. Volunteering valuable information, calm, drawing no attention._

_Doesn’t stop dream-Cassian from drawing his blaster and killing the man. Tivik looked him in the eye the whole time, even as his body went  limp and slid from his chair to the ground. There’s no surprise on the other man’s face, just a knowing acceptance that Cassian would always choose to kill him when he’d outlived his usefulness. Cassian’s seen that look on other faces. Never stopped him doing what the Rebellion needed him to do._

_He jerked awake inside the bacta tank and caused such a scene they had to bring him out early. He kept the story, the guilt behind his teeth, but the sick clenching in his gut didn’t subside, even when he got his breathing under control._

_The med droid just waited, patient and silent, but Cassian heard the surgeon heave a soft sigh and knew the woman was shaking her head. “You Intelligence types,” she said. “One day you’ll learn that what you carry around in your head can kill you just the same as a blaster.”_

_Cassian didn’t look up. It’s nothing he hasn’t heard before._

_“Do you need sedation?” She asked._

_He shook his head. “I’ve got it under control now,” he said._

_She sighed again. “All right. Try not to hyperventilate again, will you? Your back needs sufficient time to heal, Captain. You’re risking permanent damage if you don’t take this seriously.”_

_He nodded again. “I promise.”_

_When he closed his eyes in the tank again, Tivik was there. Cassian didn’t  fight the memory this time. It was nothing he didn’t deserve, after all._


	18. Ord Cestus

 

The waiting is getting to them all. They’re on Ord Cestus, having rented some interconnecting rooms with the credits Cassian lifted from an Imperial apologist on Belnar who’d been loudly denying the Empire’s connection to the Alderaan genocide. He’s never felt better about commiting a petty crime.

Bodhi is getting twitchier and twitchier, muttering to himself. Chirrut is pale and withdrawn, Baze grim at his side. Jyn is pacing, walking back and forth between Kera and Cassian. It warms him, that he is the other end of her pendulum swing, but the knowledge doesn’t stop the sick churning in his gut when he pictures the Death Star, the last time he saw it, looming on the horizon at Scarif.

The next time Jyn passes close by the couch where he’s sitting, Cassian screws up his courage and does what he knows he has to do. Doesn’t matter how long he spent on Fedalle, on Belnar, putting together the hints and the clues and indulging in ridiculous fantasies of family.

What he wants doesn’t matter - never has. This is for the best.

Half his mind is trapped on Yavin IV, going mad with needing to know what’s happening. The other half is reliving the way Kera had raised her arms and hugged him with so much trust. He lifts his head and gives his daughter – his _daughter_ – one more look before he turns away/ He catches Jyn's arm in his hand and drops his voice.

“I can’t, Jyn,” he tells her. “I can’t be around her.” His hands are shaking, he realizes in shock – his hands _never_ shake.

He sees the shock, the anger burst over her face, and knows he won’t be able to explain, not so she’d understand. How could she?

But they are sitting and waiting for news that everyone he knows – everyone _else_ he knows, that is, not counting the ones he led to their deaths on Scarif, or the ones he killed with his own hands – is dead at the hands of the Empire. And his daughter- _his daughter_ – had walked toward him so confidently, sure of her welcome, sure he wouldn’t hurt her.

“If you knew,” the words tumble out, quiet, too fast. “Knew the things I’d done. You wouldn’t even want her to _look_ at me-”

“Liana,” the Nikto interrupts, a gentle touch on Jyn’s shoulder. “Go to Kera.” It’s said with calm authority, and Cassian blinks at her in shock. Jyn, too. “Go on,” she says again, calmly confident.

After a long moment Jyn obeys, giving Cassian a long, hard look as she rises and goes to her daughter.

The Nikto – Feren, Cassian remembers – sinks down to sit at his side, staring straight ahead as he is doing.

“I was a life slave of the Hutt,” she said without preamble. “Since my birth, almost.”

He blinks and automatically looks for the tattoo. Instead he finds a metal cuff encircling her arm. It looks permanent. And painful.

“By good fortune I was separated from my master, and the injury damaged the tracking chip.” Liana found me. “Liana took me with her.”

Cassian says nothing. It’s good to know the detail, but he can’t quite understand why she’d-

“What do you know of the Hutt?” Feren asks.

He hesitates, then says, “Most of what I know of them come from breaking into black site prisons they run for the Empire. I went undercover once in the house of Grakkus to steal something from his collection.”

“Then you know something of how they live. How their slaves live.”

He nods slowly.

“I have seen filth you would not be able to imagine, Captain. I grew up in it – was raised as a thing with no mind of my own and no idea of any life outside what I could see.” She breathes quietly for a moment and then says, “You are afraid that you are tainted. I tell you that nothing you’ve done could be worse than what I have done, and I have been with Kera since the day she was born. You will bring no harm to her. She is a soul so bright and pure that even you and I cannot stain it.”

He stares at her, open mouthed.

“Kera does not need you.” She says it calmly, matter-of-fact. “She has her mother, and she has me, and neither of us will ever abandon her. She does not _need_ you, but she will do better with you, no matter what you think right now. But her mother-” here the Nikto paused, looked away. “Liana, I think, _does_ need you. She will never say so. But there are hurts in her that have never healed, and I am not the one able to fix them.”

She rises gracefully and walks away, still without once looking in his direction.

 

 

 

They have just begun discussing the possibility of going in search of food when Cassian gasps audibly and staggers back from the vidscreen. As one, they all fall silent and turn to him.

“Captain?” Chirrut asks, sharp.

Cassian doesn’t move for a moment, and she sees his hand rise to cover his face for a moment. Then he turns.

“They did it,” he says blankly.

“Did what?” Bodhi asks, terrified. His shoulders are shaking with fine tremors. He’s not the only one.

“The – they did it. We did it. It worked. The- Erso’s plan.” His eyes meet Jyn’s. “The Death Star. It’s gone.”

There’s a moment of blank silence. Jyn realizes she’s covered her mouth with her hand, and she just stares at Cassian.

Then Baze _whoops_ , shockingly, and even Chirrut jumps at the sudden burst of sound. “It _worked?”_

“It worked,” Cassian confirms, still looking at Jyn. But a tiny smile is touching one corner of his mouth. “We won.”

Bodhi lets out a long, shaky breath, and slumps back against the wall. “Merciful stars,” he says. “It’s over.”

Chirrut is murmuring something, low, could be a prayer, could be anything. Baze is leaning, their heads close together.

And then Cassian is there, in front of her, that curve in the corner of his mouth still visible.

“He did it,” she whispers. “He really did it?”

“We all did it,” Cassian tells her. “Yes.”

She bites her lip. “You’ll never win,” she says, and her voice is shaking so much she can barely get the words out. “That was the last thing my mother ever said. She told Krennic, _you’ll never win_.”

“And she was right,” he says, very gentle.

And then they’re all laughing and crying and hugging, and Kera is dancing around like a wild thing, completely confused by their sudden outburst but full of joy nonetheless. Feren is drawn in to the circle, eyes darting warily at the strange faces, but none of them can spare breath to explain.

The rest of the night is lost in a blur of images after Baze goes out to find some food and drink. They talk, and they drink, and they laugh…

…Bodhi dancing in a circle with Kera, teaching her some rhyme from his childhood

…Chirrut and Baze gently teasing Feren with tall tales of the Guardians while she gives them disbelieving sidelong glances

…Cassian, head bent as he listens to Kera explain the long and fascinating story behind her favourite doll’s name

…Bodhi, arm pressed along Jyn’s as he slumps against the wall and rubs his head reflexively, still disbelieving.

…Baze, explaining to Cassian how he came to be carrying a gun taken from a tank, a story which somehow ends with Chirrut showing his prowess with the staff

…and finally, in the small hours, Cassian and Jyn are curled up on one of the beds, a sleeping Kera tucked up between them, watching each other’s faces in the dim light.

 

 

_Six Weeks Earlier_

_“You have not finished making choices,” Galen murmured under the buzz of mess hall conversation. “You can find a way to make this situation right.”_

_Bodhi sat at that table drinking terrible caf and staring down at his shaking hands._

_What was he doing?_

Now, or when you enlisted? _a voice in his head said, sardonic._ Because when you enlisted it was for the credits your mother doesn’t want you to send back home, and the chance to fly. Now… well. It’s a lot less clear, isn’t it?

_“You already know what is in your heart,” Galen said, that rough, beautiful voice turning Bodhi inside out  without effort._

_“And what about_ your _heart,” Bodhi threw back, desperate to stop thinking about this. Stop thinking about the weapon, the things he’d overheard these past few months. Things he couldn’t help but put together. The glimpse he’d gotten on a conference room screen of an orbital battle station. The unequivocal memos offering chances for pilots to be retrained for a ‘new and exciting opportunity’. He’d checked. They were recruiting pilots and infantry like they were going out of style. Whatever else this station could do, it was being stocked with over a thousand dropships, and just as many AT-AT’s. That, at least, was no rumour. It was_ real _._

_Galen paused for a moment. “My heart has long been a hostage,” he said, very quietly. “It beats for… for someone dearer to me than I can ever express. Someone I hope might one day forgive me for my part in this.”_

_He turned then, half-rising, ready to dispose of his tray. “Of course, whether I am afforded the opportunity of correcting my mistakes is, I’m afraid, entirely up to you, Captain Rook.”_

_It’s not said nastily, but it hits Bodhi like a blow even as the older man walks away. Galen is right._

_The scientist has absolutely no chance of getting the message out himself. He is monitored more closely than anyone Bodhi has ever seen.  It’s partly fear of his intellect, Bodhi thinks. He’s seen enough of Erso’s conversations with his fellow engineers to know that it was like watching a podracer try to keep pace with a home-made speeder. But the other part of it is that they know Galen is not here voluntarily._

_Bodhi sat, still cradling his mug of cold caf, and thought that through again._

_Galen was brilliant. Light years ahead of his colleagues. Galen was a prisoner in all but name._

_If anyone could find a way to sabotage that_ thing _– to outsmart the_ entire Empire _\- it would be Galen. But his brilliance cannot get him a channel of communication off this rock._

_Bodhi breathed in and out, once._

Kriff.

_He’s actually going to do it, isn’t he._

_He scratched his head in consternation and laughed a little. He_ is _. He’s actually going to turn against the Empire._

_It’d almost be enough to make his mother proud. If she ever spoke to him again, of course._

 

 


	19. Ord Cestus II

 

The room has finally grown still and silent around them. Feren and Bodhi are sleeping on mats on the other side of the room, Baze and Chirrut are next door.

“Don’t run from us,” Jyn says suddenly.

He closes his eyes as if in pain, and she hesitates, but. She’s had too many years to think about what she’d like to say, if she could.

“I know that – you never expected any of this. Kera and me, I mean. That you didn’t ask for it-”

He winces then, and she sees what he was trying to tell her earlier. That he _didn’t_ ask for it, would never have asked for it, not because he doesn’t want a family but because he thinks he doesn’t deserve it. Jyn lets out a breath and tries to let go of the incredulous hurt she’d felt just hours earlier. It’s not about wanting, or _deserving_. But nothing is going to convince Cassian of that but time.

She lets it go. For once in her life, Jyn lets it go and lapses back into silence. Watches Cassian card his hand through Kera’s hair so, so gently.

“I didn’t just… forget you,” Cassian says suddenly, some time later.

She blinks, because that came out of nowhere and she had been hovering near sleep. “What?”

He licks his lips and plucks at the bedcovers. “On Wecacoe. I don’t want you to think that I walked away and-”

“Cassian,” she tells him, “It was one night. I never expected-”

“But there’s a reason I didn’t recognise you on Yavin IV,” he says, and that stops her. Because yes, that had stung. He’d been so clear in her mind, in her memories. And his eyes had given her the once-over you give a dangerous stranger.

“Okay,” she says, trying to brace for hurt.

He swallows. “I thought about Nari- about you,” he says. “Too much. We had a job. And I was. Distracted. So I forced myself- I told myself I’d go back and see if you were there, after. That- you’d be a good asset to the Rebellion and I’d be justified in going back to find you.” He flicks a glance up at her, half guilty, half defiant.

She takes a steadying breath.  Yes, she could understand that. The Rebellion was his whole life, after all. Had been for years, even at that point. _I’ve been in this fight since I was six years old…_

“And I – I thought about. If you joined us. We would – we’d see each other. And perhaps.”

She bites her lip, not sure if it’s sad or sweet that those were the only circumstances where Cassian could envision having a relationship.

Then again, Jyn had never envisioned any circumstances at all for herself, so who was she to judge?

“But.” He gave a headshake. “If I recruited you.” And now his face goes blank, that careful mask Jyn has come to very quickly hate. “The life expectancy for an Alliance operative is not long. I couldn’t want that for you. And I didn’t want-”

“You didn’t want to be the one to send me into danger,” she finished for him.

His mouth twisted. “I’d already lost operatives by then. And the thought of sending you into danger...  how could I be-”

He stops.

“That’s a lie,” he says, and for the first time he looks ashamed.

“Cassian?”

“I don’t want to lie to you, Jyn.”

“Good,” she tells him firmly. “I don’t want to be lied to.”

There’s silence, broken only by the steady in and out sounds of Kera’s breathing.

“Cassian?” She tries again, softly. “You can tell me.” _I won’t judge you,_ she thinks.

“It’d be a lie if I said I couldn’t be objective. Couldn’t send you into harm’s way.” He raises his eyes to hers again and his face is hard, eyes empty, voice low. “I wish I could tell you that I’d have been protective, or emotionally compromised at the thought of you in danger.” He takes in a shaky breath.

“But I _could_ be objective. I taught myself to be. I was cold hearted. There were others, before you, and after. Some I seduced and some I blackmailed, some I used and some I manipulated. I did it without hesitation or regret. I did it to destroy the Empire, to help the Alliance, I scooped out any remnants of a conscience and I-”

Jyn reaches out and stops the low torrent of words with her fingertips pressed to his lips.

He watches her, waiting for the blow to fall.

“Are you expecting me to hate you for that? To judge you?”

His mouth trembles under her fingers.

“Cassian, I’ve done plenty over the years to survive. And not once was it for a lofty goal. Do you think less of me for it?”

Even as she says it she realizes it’s not an idle question. It’s the one huge gulf between them. They really are similar kinds of people, in the end. Operators, lawbreakers, fighters, liars, unapologetic and slippery as hell. But Cassian at least valued something and dedicated himself to it. Jyn had never even _tried_ to find something larger than herself. Until, in the end, it found _her_.

“Life is hard out there on your own,” Cassian says slowly, which isn’t a _no_. “I don’t know why you ran away from Saw Gerrera, Jyn, but I-”

“I didn’t run,” she interrupts. “He left me.”

He blinks at her. “What?”

“I didn’t leave Saw. He was all I had.” Her lips tremble a little. “He- he sent me off to wait. Gave me a blaster and… never came back.”

Cassian is staring at her, aghast.

“You were- you must have been only-”

“Sixteen,” she says, and lifts a shoulder in a half shrug. “Old enough, I guess, in Saw’s eyes.”

“All of our intel indicated-”

She grimaced. “Well. Saw and I were the only ones who knew what had really happened that day, and you weren’t likely to get that story from either one of us, were you.”

He’s staring at her, mouth agape. She just gives a helpless little shrug. Does it really make a difference? Possibly it did, she thought, thinking about Cassian, how he’s stuck with the Rebellion since he was six years old. The idea of her walking away from Saw without a backward glance… Perhaps he feels he understands her better if he knows she didn’t abandon Saw, that she was the one left behind.

He reaches out and grips her hand, tight. “Ask me again.”

She blinks at him, prickles running over her skin. This feels huge, feels like the biggest risk she’s ever taken. She swallows, watching him, then says slowly, “Do you think less of me for-”

 _“No,”_ he says, still soft enough to let Kera sleep, but firm as plascrete. “No, Jyn. _Never._ ”

There’s silence again and then he sighs and says, “Anyway, what I was trying to say. There was a chemist with us. On Wecacoe. He uh. Liked to experiment. I asked him for something. To… not forget, exactly. I wasn’t going to risk everything else I carry up here. But to …mess up the memories.” He slants a glance up at her. “I only kept a few things from that night. But not- not your face.”

Jyn nods slowly. That makes more sense. Because once he’d failed to remember her, she’d assumed it had been such a tiny blip on his radar there was nothing left to recall. It’d been confusing as hell to hear him say _Nari_ , to see him get flustered over the reference to benpo cream.

“I tried to forget everything,” Cassian says softly. “But I never could.”

She manages a smile. “And I had good reasons never to forget at all.”

His eyes return to Kera again. “The best reason. The very, very best.”

 

 

_Fifteen Years Earlier_

_Chirrut could feel the moment Baze set foot on Jedha again. He took in a breath, slow and controlled, and released it again, opening his sightless eyes in the dark room._ He’s home _, Chirrut tells himself._ He’s safe _._

 _He hadn’t asked for this – neither of them had asked for this…_ connection _between them. It simply_ was _. But its strength was as consistent as it was undeniable. Especially considering that the events of the past few years, hadn’t managed to split them apart from one another._

All is as the Force wills it, _he thought, and a wry smile touched his face. He should open with that, perhaps, when he sees Baze again. Nothing else was guaranteed to annoy the other man quite so quickly._

_With a silent sigh, he rose from his sleep mat and began to prepare for the day. Baze would not come to the Temple, Chirrut knew. Baze had not set foot in the Temple for over two years. The stubborn coot was quite possibly determined enough to never do so again. And these trips off-planet did not help Baze’s dark moods._

_So Chirrut would complete his duties quickly today, all the better to seek out his wayward husband in a cantina somewhere in the city._

Moth to a flame, _he thought, then chided himself for being overdramatic. More like, mynock to a power cable. Baze wasn’t going to be the death of Chirrut, that much he could sense. But it felt remarkably like death for Chirrut to stay away._

_Sure enough, the cantina Chirrut’s steps took him to was one of the shadier places in the Old City. Which was saying something._

_He paused outside the door, letting his instinct guide him, and a few seconds later two struggling bodies fell through the opening, punching and cursing even as they tripped over one another’s feet. Chirrut stepped neatly back to avoid being entangled, and shifted his grip on his staff, just in case._

_When the fight had moved to the other side of the narrow laneway he took his chance and stepped inside. The cool air on his skin told him that it was likely dimly lit in here, which put everyone else at a disadvantage. Chirrut could  fight without that edge, of course, but if the field gave him an advantage, why should he not take it?_

_Just inside the door he stepped to one side, out of the way, and inclined his head, listening carefully. A familiar rumble came from the far right hand corner, neither happy not annoyed. Chirrut had possibly arrived in time to avert disaster, then._

_He wove carefully through the tables and used his staff as a guide more than he normally needed to. Listening, in this enclosed space, was harder than usual, and this crowd was far less predictable._

_“…don’t want to play, leave the table,” he heard Baze say, and he knew the moment the older man’s eyes landed on Chirrut. His skin tightened, every part of him coming to life. He’d not yet managed to ask Baze if it was the same for him. Chirrut’s not sure what he would do if Baze denied it._

_“Gambling, again, husband?” Chirrut asked, faux-distressed. “But if you lose all your pay how we will feed the children?”_

_A low grumble came from Baze’s chest and Chirrut had to work hard to bite back the grin. He really shouldn’t bait the other man like this. But it was just so_ easy _._

_Satisfying, too._

_Chirrut’s journey toward serenity was still a work in progress. He had never claimed otherwise._

_“Won’t you come home? Little Sinna cries for her father at night since you left.”_

_Chirrut was perhaps laying it on a little thick._

_“Little Sinna will do better without a disreputable,_ faithless _example hanging around the house.”_

_Chirrut winced at that one. He had been annoyed and hasty, and his frustration had gotten the better of him. He had sent Baze away with that word ringing in his ears. Faithless. Chirrut’s own regret and sorrow had almost been punishment enough, these past weeks. And that was without taking into account the low-grade fear that gripped Chirrut with every day Baze spent off-planet doing Force-knows-what. His husband had never been careful with his own safety._

_It was true enough, of course. Baze’s faith had not survived the Purge, and the subsequent rise of the Empire. Too many large failures on the heels of a thousand small ones. It had been too much for Baze to bear. But that didn’t mean Chirrut was right to throw it in Baze’s face._

_Chirrut couldn’t explain why his own faith remained, if he was honest. It was not through any practice of logic. It wasn’t even an act of will. It just_ was _. In the marrow of his bones, Chirrut_ knows _. All is as the Force wills it._

_Which means that even this, having to retrieve a stubborn, angry and hurt Baze Malbus from a seedy cantina in the underbelly of Jedha City, was the will of the Force also._

_Chirrut took another breath. “Baze,” he said, dropping all pretence and teasing. “Please. Come with me. I’ve missed you.”_

_He sensed the other man go still._

_“You chickening out?” another, unfamiliar voice said. “Weren’t you the one saying if I didn’t want to play, all I had to do was-”_

_“Leave the table. Yes, I recall. You’re right. I should.”_

_Ah. Chirrut recognised that tone. That tone meant Baze was going to be difficult. Though for once, it was not aimed specifically at Chirrut. He sighed, shook his head, and stepped back out of the blast zone._

_He could track what happened next easily enough._

_Baze stood. He didn’t bother to push his seat back first, so his sizeable bulk tipped the table and spilled the cards, the drinks and the credits all. There was an outraged squawk and a low curse, and Chirrut smiled down at the floor._

_“I’ll wait outside,” he murmured, and paced back the way he came, ignoring the shouts and curses and sounds of breaking furniture behind him. The exercise would be good for Baze, anyway._

_He was leaning against the wall opposite the cantina’s entry when Baze emerged a few minutes later. The building’s mud-brick was still warm at Chirrut’s back as he pushed upright, then stilled._

_“What is that?” he asked._

_“What?” Baze replied, and strode off, heading westward. He reeked of survapierre, and Chirrut wasn’t sure how much of it was in the other man’s belly, and how much had been spilled in the fight._

_“Whatever it is you’re carrying on your back.”_

_He could picture the sardonic tilt to Baze’s mouth. In earlier, happier days, he had mapped every one of those expressions with curious fingers in the darkness of their room and Baze had allowed it, indulgent. “Why what could I possibly be carrying other than gifts for our many imaginary and yet hungry children?”_

_“Did you like the name?” Chirrut asked, falling easily into Baze’s wake. “It’s the name of the newest city councillor’s hound.”_

_“It will do fine for a daughter who does not exist.” Baze said, still forging ahead._

_“No, really, what are you carrying?” Chirrut persisted. He could smell… metal, plasma discharge and the usual Jedha dust. And faintly, the hum of a power source. He tilted his head. “A new weapon?”_

_“A souvenir.”_

_They round a familiar corner and Chirrut paused, waited for Baze to drop a coin or two into the waiting hands of the children who beg here. “Off with you now,” he said, gruff as ever._

_Chirrut loved him beyond all reason._

_There was the familiar sound of a door opening, and Chirrut followed Baze inside the tiny room where he now lays his head in between off-planet trips. When the noises from the street dropped away, he could hear it more clearly – a definite low hum. There was a thud as Baze put down whatever it was and dropped down onto the pallet that served as his bed._

_Chirrut reached out a hand to touch – it was barrel shaped, warm, and definitely a power source. “Did you…” he began._

_“Took it off a tank,” Baze said casually._

_Chirrut stiffened, then drew himself up to his full height. With Baze seated, he would be looming over the older man. “You took on a_ tank _while you were fighting on foot?”_

_“I’m here, aren’t I?” Baze said, his tone hard, a warning in itself._

_Chirrut disregarded the warning, as always. “And if one day you’re not?”_

_“Then it will be because the Force wills it that way, won’t it? Husband.”_

_Chirrut’s mouth tightened. Then he drew in a breath. He can’t let himself forget that Baze did this the last time they saw one another, goaded him into a fight, and the end result was that it had fixed nothing, but Chirrut was guilty, and Baze was likely miserable in the weeks they were apart._

_Instead of snapping, he took another deliberate breath and sank down onto the bed beside Baze._

_He could feel the other man stiffen in surprise. Chirrut turned to face him, eyes downcast. “Will you be careful, at least? Can you show some care for yourself, as a favour to me?”_

_“For you?” Baze said gruffly. But his body yielded, suddenly, all the tension running out of him as he slumped back against the rough stone wall, arm pressed along the length of Chirrut’s._

_Chirrut leaned in closer, breathed in the scent of him, familiar and soothing. Not lost. Whatever else had happened around them, is still happening, he had not lost this. Force willing, he never would._

_“Well. For Sinna, then,” he said. “You know how she worries.”_

_Baze snorted again, but this time Chirrut knew he was smiling. There was always an unmistakable glow of warmth in his chest when he had made his taciturn husband smile._

_“I do,” Baze replied. “And it is never my intention to worry her, no matter what my temper goads me to say.”_

_Chirrut raised his eyebrows at that, but didn’t argue._

_“And at least now she knows I have a repeater cannon to protect me.”_

_“Is that what it is?” Chirrut shook his head. For Baze to have souvenired a repeater cannon in the midst of battle, they must have been up against some serious Imperial firepower. Ah well. No point fretting now. Baze was here, he was safe. And tonight they would sleep side by side, for the first time in weeks._

_“I will do better.” Baze told him. He sounded… not sorry. But wistful. Chirrut was not the only one who sometimes wished things could be simple again, the way they were when they were both devoted acolytes who served the Temple, and loved each other._

_“As will I,” Chirrut told him, the closest he could get to an apology for now. “As will I.”_

 

_He was wakeful, that night, as he often was when Baze returned. Once again he stared sightless up at a ceiling, in a state near to meditation. But this time Baze rasped out, “What is it?”_

_“You are not destined to die in some insignificant Imperial scuffle,” Chirrut says dreamily. “We will not part that way.”_

_“Chirrut?” Baze shifted at his side, leaning up on one arm._

_“We are destined to be part of something larger.”_

_“Chirrut?” A hand came down to cup his bare shoulder, almost startling Chirrut out of his daze._

_“We will follow a heart of kyber,” Chirrut murmured. “To the very end.”_

_There was a long silence. Then Baze said unsteadily, “You are dreaming.”_

_Chirrut smiled up at him, and drifted back to sleep._

 

 

 

 


	20. Ord Cestus III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If anyone wants a recommendation of pre-canon Baze and Chirrut, I can HIGHLY recommend The Crystal's Song by sebastianL. Oh, my _heart._  
>  It's a long read (160K) but so, so good. https://archiveofourown.org/works/10088405

 

The mood in the room next morning is oddly subdued. Cassian has sent a message to Draven notifying him of their location, they will likely be moving soon. But without the need to run from anyone, or toward anything they are all a little… untethered. _Well, no point pretending,_ she thinks.

“Where to now?” Jyn asks the others, smiling a little.

There’s a long moment of hesitation, then, “I might try to track down my Mum and my little sisters,” Bodhi says. He shrugs a little. “There’s the bright side of being disowned and cut off - at least I know she’d left Jedha,” he murmurs, head drooping. “And she might – I mean. She wouldn’t let me come home any more after I enlisted but now. Maybe?”

“Now you are a hero of the Rebellion,” Baze rumbles. “She will be proud.”

Bodhi shrugs and flushes.

“I want to meet this pilot,” Chirrut says. “This pilot who met the last of the Jedi, and shot down the Death Star without his targeting computer.”

Baze grunts but doesn’t argue.

“And you, Captain?” Chirrut continues.

Everyone goes still.

Cassian’s gaze is slanted across the room, a wry twist to his lips even as he keeps his arm wrapped firmly around Kera, who is working on a puzzle but no doubt hearing every word.

Jyn is trying hard not to hold her breath. She has no claim on him, she reminds herself. They’ve made no promises.

“There’s still a lot of work to be done for the Rebellion,” Cassian says slowly. The room is practically vibrating with tension, everyone holding their breath. “But that’s … never going to change, as far as I can see. There will always be a need for more intelligence. Better information.”

“That’s true of every war,” Baze says, staring hard at Cassian.

“I think perhaps it’s time for my role to change,” Cassian says. Then he turns and looks straight at Jyn. “I don’t know if I can simply walk away. Even if I want to-” his mouth twists. “I’ve been doing this so long it’s hard to… unlearn those instincts.”

“There’s time to figure it out,” Jyn tells him. “Talk to Draven. He must have other things you can do. You can’t tell me he doesn’t have contingencies for this, too.”

A ghost of a smile touches Cassian’s face and he turns his attention to Kera when she rises up on her knees to show him something in her puzzle. Jyn feels her heart clench up at seeing the two dark heads bent together over the vidscreen.

“Things will change, now,” Chirrut says suddenly.

“The Force tells you that?” Baze retorts.

The Guardian ignores him with the ease of long practice. “A weapon of such power,” Chirrut replies, counting off on his fingers. “Used against a peaceful planet,” another count, “and then destroyed by a rag-tag band of Rebels. The tide will begin to turn.”

“Wars are not won so easily,” Baze argues.

Kera climbs down from her chair and crosses to Feren, claiming the Nikto’s attention.

“I did not say won. I said the tide will begin to turn.” He turns his head toward Cassian, “A different kind of war is upon us now. Less of the shadows.”

Bodhi sags against the wall. “More politics, you mean.”

They all make a face at that.

There’s a pause.

“Chirrut’s right, though,” Jyn says slowly, and looks at Kera and Feren for a moment, thinking of the places where they’ve lived and worked over the past years. “There are a lot of smaller planets and moons that have no love of the Empire, but were afraid to openly stand against them. This is the perfect time for someone to… sway them to the side of the Alliance. If you could enough of those small fish…”

Cassian gives her a tired smile. “Use my skills at manipulation on a larger scale?”

Jyn shrugs. “If it works, yes.”

He gives her a long, measuring look. “That’s not necessarily the safest type of work.”

She feels hear heart skip a little at everything he’s not saying there. That he is placing more value on his life now because of Kera. And because of what they might become. But Jyn is more realistic than that. “There’s no guarantee of safety anywhere, Cassian. This is the world we were given.” _And you can’t tell me the Empire won’t try to duplicate that weapon,_ she is thinking, though she can’t bring herself to say it yet.

He smiles faintly at hearing his words come back to him.

“You could have a team to watch your back, though,” she adds. “You don’t have to do it all on your own. A team who could spot potential problems, help you fight your way out, if it comes to that.”

“Mount a daring rescue?” he says, smiling a little around the room.

She shrugs. “I’d volunteer,” she says. “And, I mean, none of this works without the whole team, so before we leave this planet we should probably visit some local scrapyards.”

He flicks a quick glance at her, asking, and she tilts her head toward Feren who looks up from where she is following along on Kera’s screen.

“Cestus Cybernetics,” Feren says. “Manufacturer of the JK-13 droid series. Among others. Based here, on Cestus. There are roughly three models which would be compatible with your K2 unit’s systems to a degree of 90% or so.”

“Worth a look, at least,” Jyn says, and smirks. “I mean, unless you’re going to pretend you didn’t keep backups?”

Cassian just stares.

“Did you think we’d forget him?” she asks, more softly now, because she can see the cracks appearing in the careful mask he’s been carrying for days. Kay had been more than a useful tool to Cassian, he had been a friend. She could still remember hearing that odd droid-voice back on Jedha saying _Cassian, I’m sorry about the slap._

They’ve all carefully avoided mentioning Kay since Scarif.

“We wouldn’t ever forget him,” Bodhi says. “He was the most terrifying of us all, which is saying something,” he adds, indicating Baze, and Chirrut, and Jyn, and Cassian.

“Feren has a real way with ‘droids,” Jyn says, coaxing.

Cassian swallows. “You don’t have to- we shouldn’t,” he corrects himself. “It’s an unnecessary risk.”

“He’d do it for one of us,” Bodhi says.

They all look at him.

“Okay, well. No he wouldn’t,” he concedes.

“Unless the Captain told him to,” Chirrut says with a smirk.

“He handled himself well enough on the streets of Jedha,” Baze adds. “I can’t say it isn’t fun to watch an Imperial droid take out Imperials.”

“I’d feel a lot better knowing you had Kaytoo at your back,” Jyn says.

He shoots her a look. “Now you’re playing dirty.”

She smiles at him, sly. “Only way to win, sometimes.”

He takes a deep breath and glances back toward Kera. “If- if you think we can do it without too much risk,” he says. “Then I guess. Yes. It would be good to have all of Rogue One back together.”

 

 

 

 

Bodhi volunteers to take Kera up to the roof of their building to watch the ships taking off and landing. It doesn’t feel right to be planning crime right in front of her, so Jyn accepts gratefully. Baze and Chirrut propose to take the rest of Cassian’s stolen credits and go off to procure more food for the group, and perhaps cast a casual eye over the part of the city that houses the droid manufacturing plant, see where their scrap goes, what security is like.

Cassian is pouring over maps in the corner and the room, for once, is quiet. “You and Cassian and Kera,” Feren says.

“Yes?”

“You are. You are a family now. The three of you.”

Jyn smiles a little, then meets Feren’s eyes and feels her face drop at what she sees there, the stoic grief. “Wha- Feren?”

“You might wish to-”

Understanding washes over Jyn.

“Don’t you finish that sentence,” Jyn hisses. “Don’t you _dare_.”

She is so incandescently _angry_. She can’t remember feeling like this except for the day she’d watched a man in white shoot her mother down like a dog. Shock had hid it at first, but later... _Later_. She’d been angry enough to injure herself punching and kicking the sides of the tunnel that had hidden her from sight. Saw had taken that rage and honed it to a fine edge until she was a deadly weapon against the Empire.

“If you think- _how_ could you think,” she spits, “What- why would you-”

“My friend,” Feren says, and blinks rapidly at her.

“You have been the _only person_ I could ever rely on in my _entire life_ ,” Jyn shouted. “The _only_ one who ever came back, who never _used_ me, who never _wanted_ anything from-”

“My friend,” Feren says again, and her shoulders are drawing up again

“You think that I could just walk away from you, that I would-”

“Jyn,” Cassian is saying, his hands on her shoulders. “Jyn, calm down. Stop. You’re frightening her.”

“I would never, I will _never_ leave you, I _wouldn’t_ -”

“Shh,” Cassian says, and she twists out of his hands on pure fury, wanting to hit something.

“How could you- why would you-”

“I am sorry. Liana, I am sorry,” Feren says, head bowed. Her body language is a slap in the face, it’s the way she used to stand when she was a newly escaped slave, for months she said everything with that posture and the downcast eyes, the bent head. It wasn’t until Jyn had placed Kera in her arms that Feren had looked at her, wide-eyed with disbelief, and unbent, just a little.

To everyone’s shock, Jyn bursts into tears.

Mortified, she turns away from everyone. _Great_ , she has time to think. _Just kriffing gr_ -

Familiar arms close around her.

“Forgive me,” Feren says. “I did not- I was afraid.”

“I would never.” Jyn says. “I would _never._ ”

“I know. I know it. I am sorry.”

It all goes silent, and after a while Jyn becomes aware that Chirrut and Baze had entered the room, probably due to all the shouting, and are now hovering, clearly torn between staying and leaving.

Then Chirrut seems to come to a decision, and takes a crisp step forward. Feren looks at him, wide-eyed. They’ve had very little opportunity to interact, Jyn realizes suddenly.

“There was a red Nikto Jedi, you know,” Chirrut tells her. “During the Clone Wars. Baze met him.”

She blinks at him. Behind Chirrut, Baze gives one nod, confirmation.

“Not all Nikto are slaves,” Chirrut said. “And your soul is as free as any in this room.”

Slowly, very slowly, a smile dawns over Feren’s face.

 

_Six Days Earlier_

_Baze doesn’t like Imperials. Has hated them, in fact, since long before their cursed ship came to hover over his city, and their white-armoured soldiers polluted the streets. But the fact that they defiled the temple and stole their crystals helped to solidify it._

_Which is why he has no time for anyone who would work with them, wear the uniform._

_And now, sitting in a stranger’s farmhouse on a world whose name he can’t actually remember, he stares down at Bodhi’s injured, unconscious form and thinks about how close he came to killing this young man._

_A fellow Jedhan. Wearing_ that _uniform._

_Like a slap in the face, it fed his rage nicely. Not that it needed much feeding anymore.  
_

_But then he’d listened, in that ship, to the shaky voice telling an unlikely story of how an Imperial scientist had appealed to the conscience of an Imperial cargo pilot, and given the Alliance the opportunity to destroy that- that_ thing.

_Baze stares down at his hands. He’d resisted cleaning up when they’d arrived on Yavin. Some ridiculous, sentimental idea that the dust of Jedha still clung to him. As if the rain of Edhu had not seen to that. And now his hands bear the sand of Scarif, and the blood of more soldiers, and that weapon is still out there, no doubt moving to a new location, another victim-_

_He holds himself still with difficulty. Jyn is asleep on his shoulder, and kriff knows, she needs the rest. The shadows under her eyes are more like bruises, but the look in them is somehow worse, every time she looks at Captain Andor._

_This, Baze can admit inside his head, is why_ he _isn’t looking at Chirrut. He knows his every thought and fear will be written all over his face. But those things are not easily shared, for Baze._

_Once he was full of faith and belief, once he was open to emotion. He would let it flow through him, and then let it go again, impermanence as a way of life. Attachment to nothing, living with the rock steady acceptance through the Force that all is as it is meant to be._

_Until Chirrut. Until the Purge. Until the Empire._


	21. Ord Cestus IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so close to the end, my lovelies! Thank you all for coming on this journey with me.  
> And can I just add, I have been so, so tempted to subtitle my chapters with dumb Star Wars puns.
> 
> "Scarif II Attack of the Jedhans"  
> "Ord Cestus III The Revenge of the Rogues"  
> "Yavin IV A New Alliance"
> 
> Aren't you glad I didn't?

 

 

It was sneaky and underhanded, but when the message comes in on their terminal that Draven has landed on Ord Cestus, Jyn doesn’t call out for Cassian, who is busy playing with Kera in the other room. She reads the message again, and sits back, staring out the window at the bustling city beyond.

Then she rises, very slowly, and motions Baze over. “Want to come and greet a visitor?” she asks. “A man of such rank should really get an escort back to our rooms.”

Baze gives her a sidelong glance but merely says, “I’d be happy to go with you, little sister.” He crosses to Chirrut, who is still napping a little after his injury, and murmurs something quiet. Jyn sticks her head through the connecting door and calls, “I’m just going out to buy some supplies.”

Cassian sends her a quick, flashing smile over his shoulder, and Jyn could just about expire from the uneasy feeling of guilt.

 

 

Baze is a steady weight at her shoulder as they wait at the landing dock. The ship touches down lightly enough, ramp opening with a familiar swoosh, and then General Davitts Draven is striding down, dressed in nondescript clothing, looking mild-mannered and like a mid-ranking bureaucrat, everything about him broadcasting that he’s nothing much, unimportant, _look away and forget you ever saw me._

Jyn feels her gut clench.

Papa. And then, Kera. This man ordered the death of her father. But this man also put her on the path to find Kera. How is she ever going to reconcile the two?

He pauses halfway down the ramp when he spots Jyn and Baze, but gives no other sign that he’s taken aback not to see Cassian.

Jyn starts toward him, suddenly sure that she was right and they had to have this conversation here, alone. It isn’t fair to put Cassian in the middle of this.

Draven’s face is impassive, but Jyn knows he has to be wary, calculating possible betrayals or catastrophes.

“Everything’s fine,” Jyn says, “I just wanted to talk to you without an audience.”

She gets a narrow-eyed look for that, but then he turns and says quietly to the young Arkanian who is hovering just inside the doorway to the cockpit. “Go for a walk. I’ll comm you when I’m ready to depart.”

The Arkanian gives one quick nod and asks no questions, just jogs past them down the ramp and disappears into the city.

Draven gestures them into the ship and hits the ramp to close them up. Jyn sits, the easiest way she can think of to reassure him that there’s nothing wrong.

Baze, being Baze, chooses to loom, his eyes fixed on Draven, unblinking.

“Why did you- back on Yavin. Why did you help me?” Jyn asks.

Draven sits, holding himself stiffly. “I don’t recall-”

“If you hadn’t intervened I probably would have thrown myself off a cliff,” Jyn says baldly. “Why did you help me?”

Draven’s eyes don’t waver. “You wouldn’t have,” he said quietly. “You’re not the type to quit.” She feels it then, a connection she doesn’t want to admit but can’t deny. He’s right. She wouldn’t have just let go of life. She might have died, but it’d have been through some reckless strike against the Empire. And that’s something Draven understands _exactly_.

There’s a pause. A fleeting expression passes over his face, one too quick to parse, and then he says quietly, “I offered some advice, that’s all.”

“You let us take a ship,” she says. “You let us take _Cassian_ , if it comes to that.”

“He was on medical leave anyway,” Draven replies.

Jyn waits. Baze tilts his head a little, considering. Draven’s eyes flick up to the older man’s face. Something passes between them, then Draven says, “That kind of uncertainty leads to paralysis. Better to know, and make your choices from there.”

Jyn just looks at him, but Draven, for once, looks away. His jaw tightens, and she realizes that he knows that Cassian told them his story. Draven knows that Rogue One knows his tragic secret.

“You gave the order to kill my father,” she says, voice cold, trying to get back to where she’d been just five minutes ago.

Now Draven goes still. “I did.” He turns to meet her gaze, and says, “It wasn’t an order I gave lightly. You may not believe me, but I had to make a judgement call, and I had no evidence to support your theory. All you had was hope, and the emotional wish to believe in your father.”

“But I was right,” Jyn says. “We were _right_.”

“And if you’d been wrong it would have ended the Alliance.”

“A weapon like that would have ended the Alliance anyway,” Jyn says. “Your support was already crumbling, from what I saw of that meeting. Better to roll the dice and trust in hope-”

“My kind of work doesn’t run on hope,” Draven interrupts. And now there’s a fine flush to his cheeks. “I understand the value of a rousing speech, Erso, and I’m as glad as anyone that you were right about your father’s design, _and_ that one lucky shot was enough to kill that thing. But the work I do has to be cold blooded, has to be about minimising risks. You can’t assume the best in intelligence work, you just _can’t_. There are times where you have to assume that your assets might be compromised, or lying, or _wrong_. My job is to plan for the worst case scenario.”

She shakes her head, “Well, I see where he gets it,” she mutters. “You’re not even sorry, are you.” She’s not sure if she’d hoped that he would lie, make the pretence of getting on her good side.

“I’m sorry your father’s dead,” he says, with obvious difficulty. “Again, I’m sure you don’t believe me, and you wouldn’t care if you did, but I am sorry that your father is dead. But I have to think about other fathers, and mothers, and their children, and the consequences if I’m wrong.”

“And somehow I have to reconcile that the same man who ordered my father killed, helped me to find my daughter.”

Now Draven looks startled. “I’m not sure why you’d need to reconcile anything, Erso,” he says, frowning. “You don’t like me or trust me, and you don’t have to. There’s no reason for us to-”

He breaks off, because Jyn is unable to keep the tiny curl from the side of her mouth. She glances over at Baze, who chuffs.

“Why don’t you come back and meet the rest of Rogue One,” she says. “Things might be clearer once you do.”

Wrongfooted, and clearly suspicious, Draven gets to his feet and follows Jyn home.

 

 

Cassian’s face when they walk back into their rooms is a picture. Eyes wide, very wide, skin losing colour as he glances from Jyn to Draven and back again. Luckily Kera is being paced through her bathtime routine with Feren right now.

“Surprise,” Jyn deadpans. “Don’t say I never get you anything.”

Cassian stares for a long moment, then drags his eyes back to Draven. “Sir,” he says, and falls into parade rest, probably on automatic. Draven, on the other hand, is glancing from Jyn to Cassian and back again, and looks like an extremely distasteful idea is just now occurring to him.

Jyn can’t help it. She gives him a slow, shit-eating grin.

“Andor,” Draven says tightly. “Report.”

Cassian’s eyes flick backwards and forwards again. Jyn almost feels sorry for him. Almost.

Then, all of a sudden, Cassian just seems to half-fall into his seat. “Sir,” he says, “it’s a long story. Will you sit?”

Draven blinks, head rearing back, and Chirrut murmurs something that has Baze snickering. Jyn shakes her head at them both, and they retaliate by gathering up Bodhi and heading back out into the city, leaving Jyn and Cassian and Draven on the cusp of the world’s most awkward conversastion.

“I really need to go back some time, for this to make sense.” Cassian says. He gives Jyn a quick look, and she shrugs her permission. There’s no way to get out of telling Draven everything. Hopefully the story will stop with him. She’s known for days that pretending Kera doesn’t exist is probably impossible now.

“On Wecacoe,” Cassian says, and Draven shifts in surprise.

“That was …six years ago.”

Cassian nods, a rueful smile touching his lips. “I, uh. Spent the night with a girl.”

“Captain,” Draven begins.

“Please. Hear me out. I liked her.” Cassian says, low. “I liked her a lot. It was a distraction.”

“Enough of a distraction that you brought home a reprogrammed Imperial droid on impulse,” Draven says with some asperity.

Jyn’s eyebrows go up. He’d left that part out, earlier.

Cassian flushes. “Uh. Yes. Anyway I, well. You remember Ferz?”

“The Bothan. Fancied himself a creative chemist.”

Cassian nods. “I asked him to… dose me up. So I’d forget her.”

“You let that _unqualified, reckless_ -”

 _Oh,_ now _he’s concerned for Cassian’s welfare,_ Jyn thinks uncharitably.

“Yes,” Cassian breaks in hurriedly. “Sorry. Anyway, the important part is that it worked. It worked well enough that I didn’t recognise her when you handed me her file. Or when I saw her again in our command centre… or when I travelled with her to Jedha.”

Draven has gone very still. His head turns in Jyn’s direction. There’s a long moment of silence, then he says, “You’re telling me that the two of you-”

He stops abruptly. She can almost see that Intelligence-trained mind working overtime, slotting things into place. He swings toward Jyn. “Your child,” he says, “how old-”

Jyn shrugs and gives him a half-smile. Instead of answering she heads next door to the ‘fresher, where a still-damp Kera is just pulling on her sleep clothes. Feren tilts her head toward the fresher, ready to take her own turn, and Jyn nods. This routine is familiar from many nights in different locations.

“Kera, baby,” Jyn says. “Do you want to meet somebody?”

Her daughter just nods, and Jyn swings her up into her arms with some effort. She’s really getting to be too big for that. In the doorway, she pauses, and watches Draven’s face drain of what little colour it had left.

“Kera,” Jyn says, “I want you to meet General Draven. He knows your Papa from work.”

Draven is sitting very still. Jyn realizes that he’s after that first comprehensive glance, he’s not looking at Kera’s face. She remembers, belatedly, that Draven’s children had all been daughters, and that seeing a young girl dressed in sleep clothes and fresh from her bath is probably the most domestic thing he’s seen in many years, and is also probably a horribly cruel reminder of what the man has lost. She freezes. This is a wound she had never intended to inflict.

“Hello,” Kera manages on a yawn. “I’m Kera.”

Cassian rises and moves to stand on Jyn’s other side. “Sir,” he says, and gives Draven a long look, full of meaning.

Draven raises his eyes. There’s feeling there, and Jyn feels her throat tighten. Kriff. She suddenly can’t hate the man.

“Well,” he manages hoarsely. “There’s not much doubt about her parentage, is there?” he pushes to his feet and stares hard at Kera for a long moment. “It’s nice to meet you, young lady.”

Kera smiles sweetly at him and tips her head onto Jyn’s shoulder, fighting back another yawn.

“Cassian,” Jyn says very quietly, “can you turn down the bed for her? I’ll be there in a minute.”

He hesitates, looking down at Jyn, and she meets his eyes. Whatever he sees on her face has him nodding, and he treads quietly out of the room.

Draven is still standing in the same spot, as if frozen. Jyn swallows, then takes a few steps forward until they are standing close together. “Kera,” she says, watching Draven’s face closely, “Do you remember when you and Feren were waiting for me, and you weren’t sure where I was?”

Her little hands tighten for a moment, then she nods.

“Well, General Draven is the one who helped me find you. He suggested a place for me to look.”

She twists to look up at Jyn, eyes wide. Jyn nods at her.

Draven is holding himself so tightly she’s a little afraid he’s going to explode. But Kera turns, looking at Draven again, and says, “Thank you for helping my Mama find me,” and reaches out with her two small arms for a hug.

Draven’s shoulders tighten, pulling up, but he moves instinctively to take her weight as Kera reaches for him, and in the next second she has wrapped her arms around his neck and is resting against him with utter trust. Draven’s face is stricken, and Jyn hates herself a little. But this is the only kind of peace offering she can give the man, and in one part of her mind she is cold-bloodedly thinking of the advantages if a man like this is protective of Kera, too.

Jyn learned ruthlessness at Saw Gerera’s knee, but she’s never been motivated to practise it quite so viciously as she has since she became a mother.

Draven’s arms come up to close gently around Kera, and he bows his head slowly. For a moment everything is still, and Jyn gives herself a second, two seconds, to remember that gut clenching feeling of a lost child. Draven will never feel the relief that has blessed Jyn. He will never get that second chance. She bites her lip and knows that somewhere in her heart, she has begun to forgive Draven for what he did to her father.

There’s no sound behind her, but she knows Cassian has reappeared. She isn’t brave enough to look at him, not sure what he’ll think. In front of her Draven is letting go of Kera, just as she leans back. He keeps his head down, face averted, but lets his hand rest on Kera’s shining head of hair for a moment.

“Time for bed, I think,” Jyn says, partly on instinct as a parent and partly wanting to end this painful tableau.

Cassian kisses Kera’s hair and meet’s Jyn’s eyes. There’s understanding there, but a little shock as well. She wonders if he’s assuming she did this as cold-blooded manipulation, or perhaps sadistic punishment.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” she murmurs to him, and carries Kera out of the room.

She takes her time, tells Kera a story and sings her a song, partly to give Draven time to collect himself and partly because she’s reluctant to face him again.

 

 

Finally, though, Kera’s eyes are drooping and Jyn has to return to face the music.

She pauses in the doorway and then closes it, sure that privacy is best for whatever is about to come next.

Draven looks at her, dry eyed and impassive as she sinks into the chair beside Cassian.

“It seems you’ve cost me my best operative,” he says.

“He’ll be your best at whatever role you give him,” she says, “we both know that.”

Cassian shifts at her side. She’s not sure if it’s surprise or embarrassment.

Draven shows no emotion at all. “Except that your priorities have no doubt shifted in the wake of recent revelations.”

“Yes,” Cassian says, and Jyn feels something unclench in her heart at having heard him say it so plainly, to Draven. “Kera comes first. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still be of use to the Rebellion.”

“And the rest of your… team?”

“We’d like to stay together,” Cassian says. “We’re not an obvious team by any means, but we do have a mix of useful talents.”

“After something like Alderaan…” Jyn shakes her head. “There are places we might be able to convince to join the fight. A weapon like that is either going to terrify people into submitting, or galvanise them into joining the fight.”

Draven gives her a long look. Then he gives a brief nod. “There may be something to what you say. I can take it to the Council, suggest your team be considered for… unconventional missions.”

Jyn lets out a breath and sags back in her chair. “Unconventional. Yeah. That’s us.”

Draven glances away, jaw working as he thinks. “Do you have a cover in mind?”

Cassian and Jyn exchange glances. They’ve talked about this, a little, in the early hours of the morning.

“Feren – my friend – is top notch at droid repair. Cassian has programming skills, I’m something of a slicer.”

“A mobile droid repair shop would give us reason to go to any number of backwater planets,” Cassian says.

“And a droid with a tracking device could be useful for gathering information, if we can construct something that makes it past most scanners.” Nothing will beat the Imperial scanners of course, but if they had enough eyes and ears scattered through a sector, they could collect something useful for identifying new targets. A local meeting with an Imperial could be nearly as good as a droid on an Imperial ship.

Draven nods slightly. “Could work.” He scrubs a hand over his chin. “You’d not want to bring the child along, I assume.”

Jyn shakes her head. Cassian says, “A few of us could stay behind each time. Bodhi and I can share piloting, Chirrut and Baze could hand off being security… a team that changes composition is also more likely to slip through surveillance nets.”

 “So… a ship with berths for at least four crew. Storage for parts and tools. And some hidden compartments, obviously.”

“Sounds great,” Jyn says. “I didn’t realize it was my name-day.”

Draven shoots her a glance. “I have a cover that would work for this on Pamarthe. If my… nephew was starting a business I would naturally want to help him get started, perhaps by bargaining for a suitable ship.”

Jyn goes still. He wants to take Cassian to another planet. She doesn’t know if it’s paranoia or not, but everything inside her says no to the idea. “This is an awful lot of assistance for a plan that hasn’t yet been approved by the Council.”

“I do have some sway,” Draven says, brows up. “And this is not policy, this won’t affect the entire Alliance. This is effective deployment of my own troops. I have discretion for that without needing to go up the chain of command.”

“We’re not your troops,” Jyn says automatically.

“But Andor _is,”_ Draven says, “and until someone in command tells me otherwise, he is still my asset.”

“He is also sitting right here,” Cassian says. Jyn finally dares to look at him.

He’s looking at her with so much understanding it almost hurts. “Jyn,” he says. “You have to trust me.”

Fucking Draven. Trust him to jab a sharp blade right into the most tender spot of their relationship.

She just looks at Cassian, not knowing what to say, how to explain what she’s feeling. Not that she has to – he reads people so easily, he already knows.

“When would you want to go?” Cassian asks, finally. Jyn swallows.

“We could leave in the morning,” Draven says. “It should only take one or two days. I have assets on Pamarthe who also need to be told of the Alliance’s new protocols.” He hesitates. “We’ve abandoned the base on Yavin, obviously. They’re deciding on a location for Echo base as we speak. It’s possible we’ll keep some of the Council on ships from here on out.”

Cassian turns his head to meet Jyn’s eyes. “Think you guys could keep yourselves busy here for a couple of days? Stay out of trouble?”

“No,” she tells him honestly.

He makes the tiniest smile and it makes her want to kiss him. She looks away instead. She can’t stop him from going with Draven. Shouldn’t even want to, really. If he’s going to leave them because he can’t say no to the Alliance, better to find out now than in a few months or years.

“I’ll walk you back to the ship, sir,” Cassian says, and gets to his feet. He rests a hand lightly on Jyn’s shoulder just as he turns to go. Those gentle hands, she thinks, and does not wrap her arms around herself.

Jyn watches him walk to the door at Draven’s side, and hopes she’s not seeing how her future turns out.           

 

 

Cassian asks Jyn to walk him to the spaceport next morning. They walk quietly through the crowded streets, but just before they reach the terminal Cassian catches her arm in his hand and spins her into a quiet laneway.

She looks up at him. “Jyn,” he says, very quietly. “I need you to trust me on this. I’m coming back.”

She swallows. She knew, of course, that she was horribly transparent to Cassian, but she hadn’t expected him to address it openly.

“I do,” she says, but her mouth wants to drag down at the corners.

He gives her a look. Patient, but calling her on the lie.

“I _do_ ,” she insists. “I trust that you mean it. I trust that you want to be a part of Kera’s life.”

“But.”

She shrugs, throws her hands up helplessly. “But I know how this is going to go, Cassian. You have people out there, don’t you? Informants? Double agents. People in the field. You’re their handler, or their only contact, or the only one they’ll trust. And you don’t have it in you to just abandon them, or what they might be able to do for the Rebellion.”

He gives a little shake of the head, but he looks away. It’s a bitter victory.

“I’m not- I’m trying not to be an asshole about this but, I just. Your sense of responsibility is one of the best things about you. But Draven knows that too. And no doubt he’ll be pointing out that you have responsibilities to people other than us.”

“So you think I’ll just …walk away.”

“Of course not.” She says. “Of _course_ not. But I just.” She swallows.  “I’m scared of what you’d say yes to just because Draven asks you to. And I’m scared that if you tell him no you’ll end up hating yourself.”

“No winning, hmm?” he slides his hands into his back pockets, body language closing off.

“I don’t know,” Jyn says, and gives a helpless shrug. “I really don’t know.”

He looks down at the ground and says quietly, “Do you think I haven’t been thinking of this ever since I realized-”

He stops abruptly, and her heart aches, because she knows he doesn’t know how to finish that. Doesn’t feel right yet to say _since I realized Kera was mine_.

“I’ve had to live with uncertainty and plans changing in a heartbeat for twenty years, Jyn. Can’t you trust me to find a way?”

This is the second time he’s used that word, and she lifts her eyes to his, searches his face. Trust. It’s not easy for her – never will be, she thinks. But he _has_ earned it.

For a moment they just watch one another, and then she takes a deep breath. “Yes,” she says, “all right.”

He blinks at her, comically surprised. “What?”

“Yes. I’ll trust you. To figure things out. To come back to Kera.”

She watches him swallow, glance away like he hadn’t expected her to agree.

 _Called your bluff, did I, spy boy?_ she thinks, and smothers a grin.

When he swings his head back toward her his dark eyes are intent, bright with emotion. “I’ll find a way, Jyn,” he says. “I promise. I swear it. If I have to take a few trips to extract some agents, I promise it will only be a few. I can hand people off – there are contingencies for this, you know?”

 _Contingencies in case you got killed in the field_ , she almost says. It’s not exactly the most comforting thought. She takes a deep, shaky breath. “All right. Okay,” she agrees, and nods. Now she slides her hands into her back pockets and glances away.

“And, Jyn?” he asks, voice  low and smooth.

She turns back toward him, then freezes when she realizes he’s closed the gap between them on soundless feet.

Her skin prickles at his nearness. The clean scent of him, his warm breath on her cheek. “It’s not only Kera I’m coming back to.”

She just swallows, finding it hard to meet his eyes.

“I know we can’t rush things. I know we need to be careful. But I don’t want to pretend I’m not thinking about this. That I haven’t been thinking of doing this for a long time, since before I knew about Kera.”

And then his hands come up to cup her face, tilting closer. He hesitates, gives her a chance to pull away, but she arches toward him instead and then his mouth is on hers and it’s bliss, it’s the pull of memory and the fresh feeling of something altogether new.

She kisses Cassian Andor in a tucked-away corner of a city street, and the world falls away.

When Jyn comes back to herself she’s wound her arms around him and is holding on fiercely, even as they end the kiss. They lean on one another, both breathing a little too quickly, small smiles on their faces.

Jyn bites her lip. She really, really doesn’t know what to say.

“Maybe that will convince you?” Cassian murmurs, and his hands have slid into her hair, firm and strong and warm. “A kiss like that will keep a man awake at night.”

She grins down at her feet. She really doesn’t know how to do this. She hasn’t exactly had the time for companionship the past few years.

Cassian shakes his head a little, forehead still pressed against hers. “Cariño. Believe in me a little while longer, please?”

“I’ll try,” Jyn says, and brings her hand up to clasp his wrist, hanging on while she can. _Rebellions are built on hope,_ she thinks a little wildly. Relationships too, maybe? “I really will try.”

 

_Two Years Earlier_

_He’d known she’d be angry. Hell, he’d known she’d probably refuse to let him in the house again. Those things he’d expected._

_What he hadn’t expected was for her to pack up and flee Jedha in between one visit and the next, and leave no word._

_He wasn’t even particularly mad about it, if he was honest. The Imperial cargo runs that had been happening on Jedha since he was a kid had been ramping up while Bodhi was away at flight school. It was just his luck that right when he’d only just begun serving the Empire, they would finally stop humouring the locals and just_ take _what they wanted._

_He still owed more than five years of service, in order to repay the flight training. Five more years before his mother would speak to him. The twins would be almost fully grown by then. Did they even remember him anymore, he wondered? Was his name ever spoken at all?_

_Bodhi stood on the sunny side of the street where he’d grown up and eyed the empty house. The neighbours scuttled past, avoiding his eyes, but in the way that meant awkwardness, not tragedy. He’d seen more than enough of both to be able to tell the difference._

_He turned away and traced his steps back toward the centre of town. There was only one person left he could think of who might let him know what had happened, and he might as well give it a try now._

_The stall was as shabby as ever. Faded canvas flapped overhead, and there was a faint taste of sand in the back of the throat, somehow. The old man looked up as Bodhi stepped inside._

_“Nephew,” he said, and gave a slow nod._

_“Uncle,” Bodhi returned, though this man was about as much a blood relation as Grand Moff Tarkin was._

_“You’re seeking news?”_

_“If there’s any to be shared,” Bodhi replied, and gestured toward the innocent looking bottles lining the rickety shelf at the back. He set a credit chip down on the rickety table._

_“May be,” the man said. “May be, young Rook.”_

_Bodhi took a seat and waited. There was no rushing old Styx. And he was… well, he could wait. If the news was bad. There was no rush in hearing it._

_When his drink had been poured and the credits exchanged, Bodhi took a sip and savoured the familiar feeling of his eyes watering and his throat trying to close up. He’d learned to drink on the hideous rot-gut Styx brewed in his still, but he was severely out of practice._

_“Your mother has a powerful loyalty to the old ways,” Styx finally said._

_Bodhi nodded. Outside the canvas he could hear the rhythmic tread that screamed_ stormtroopers, _and he felt his shoulders hitch, head dropping at the sound of it._

_“The destruction of the temple hit her hard.”_

_Bodhi nodded. Again. There wasn’t anything else to be said. It had hit him hard, too, if he was honest, he just wasn’t in a position to show it. He’d had to keep his stoic Imperial face on, and pretend that he felt nothing at hearing the sacred temple of his home had been defiled. That he didn’t care that he was a part of the machine that had done the deed. He looked down at his uniform, pinched the cloth between finger and thumb._

_He’d joined them. He’d joined the Imperial machine which raped worlds and destroyed cities, and he’d done it with his eyes wide open._

_“Your father’s sister got in touch,” Styx said, when the sound of Imperial boots on Jedhan sand had finally faded away. “Seems her husband died.”_

_Bodhi found himself frowning and looked up. “Aunty Lish?”_

_Styx nodded, and turned back to organising his bottles. “She needed help running the bakery. Offered your mother a share.”_

_Bodhi sat back. That was better than he’d pictured. His aunt ran the small family bakery that Bodhi’s father had wanted no part of, had run all the way to the Outer Rim to escape. But Serenno was a safe enough place, and the Rook family was well known there. It would be a good place for the girls to grow up, for his mother to try and forget old hurts and disappointments._

_Disappointments like Bodhi himself._

 

 


	22. Siskeen

 

 

So Cassian leaves, and what’s left of Rogue One make use of the time to scope out the two main junkyards in the city, as well as another, further out in a settlement. Having so much scrap to work from is a gift from the heavens, in fact it’s simple enough they decide to go ahead with the first stage before Cassian has even returned. It’s a good distraction, and keeps Jyn’s mind off the inevitable _he’s not coming back what if he never comes back_ monologue in her head.

The heist goes surprisingly smoothly.  It probably helps that the sector is in complete disarray, people running on the edge of panic.  First the news of Alderaan, on the heels of the ‘mining incident’ in Jedha, and now the destruction of the Death Star. People are uneasy, twitchy, and distracted, and the security guards around the Cestus Cybernetics facility are no different. Jyn and Feren and Baze go on a foraging trip to the local scrapyard and drag back two different chassis with varying degrees of damage. Feren also talks Baze into carrying an assortment of useful circuits and interchangeable components like joints and wheels, for their future business venture.

“Waste not,” Chirrut says piously, and laughs when Baze just grunts at him from beneath his not-so-slight burden.

That evening Cassian walks through the door without a scratch on him, a little surprised at the fervour with which he’s greeted. Kera engulfs him with a glad shout, and Jyn can only be grateful that he’d radioed from orbit so she could have her small breakdown in private in the ‘fresher before he got back. Not that he won’t take one look at her and _know,_ of course.

Nervous, Jyn leads him to the corner where they’ve stashed their loot.

“He’s a K4-D8 series. So… not a perfect match. But tough.  Think Kay will be happy with it?”

“Not a chance,” Cassian said, and the half-grin on his face was beautiful to see. “Nothing makes Kay happy. That’s how I’ll know it’s Kay.”

Feren spends the next day marrying the two chassis together, only to find that the power centre for both is degraded beyond repair. While she works, Cassian takes the rest of them to see the new ship Draven has procured for them, giving it over to Bodhi for checking the flight systems. Jyn, Chirrut and Baze are assigned the task of retrofitting some smuggling panels that are both big enough to conceal passengers if needed, and shielded from scans.

While they measure and pace out distances and argue, Cassian scopes out the droid manufacturing facility. In the early hours of the morning, he manages to sneak into the facility between shifts and come out again with a power pack, a new security scanner, _and_ some audio and visual components in his back pocket. It’s the start of their spy-droid program.

After a few more trips to the other scrapyard, they’ve salvaged enough to be able to build their smugglers trapdoors. Having hauled all of the stuff onto the new ship, they split the group and leave Ord Cestus in both ships, heading for Siskeen. It’s another planet with a huge droid-construction industry, and another likely source of scrap and supplies. Some they can steal, some they will buy, but by the time they’ve finished, their fledgling business will be ready, and they’ll likely have some direction from the Alliance.

In between jobs, they toss around possible planets where they might establish a small, unremarkable home where Kera will remain with at least some of her extended family around her at all times.  So far, Lew'el gets Jyn’s vote.

 _Nothing there but oysters,_ Baze had grumbled, which was hard to argue. Cassian was the only other member of the group who’d even heard of the place which, Jyn argued, made it just about perfect.

 

 

 

Kay comes back to life in the middle of the desert on the southern continent of Siskeen. Feren and Cassian have been working together for hours, trying to get Kay’s memories to cleanly load into the K4’s core. Jyn misses the actual moment, having returned to the new ship to finish welding the panels for the smuggler’s compartments that would be concealed beneath the droid repair shop on the ship’s lower level.

The first she knows of Kay’s return is when she hears heavy footsteps above, and then an unfamiliar voice saying, “Cassian, you seem to have acquired a companion even more useless than Jyn Erso in the short time I have been gone.”

Jyn freezes, then wriggles out from under the metal box and rolls to her feet, half-jogging to the ladder.

“Kay, this is Kera,” Cassian says, patient to the end. “Please be nice.”

“I am never nice,” Kay says.

“You are always honest, though,” Jyn says, head just poking through to the upper level. “Good to see you back, Kay.” She glances past the droid to where Feren is hovering, skin flushed a deeper green with success. Jyn beams at her.

The head swivels toward her. “Oh good,” Kay says, unconvincingly. “Jyn Erso is also here.”

“You know, she’s the one who found you a new body,” Cassian says. He’s grinning from ear to ear, and Jyn can’t help returning the smile. “ _And_ a great technician,” he adds, waving a hand at Feren.

“You’re tall,” Kera says, ignoring everything else. Her head is tipped almost all the way back so she can stare up at Kay.

“Judging by the habit of stating the obvious, there is a seventy three percent chance this child belongs to Jyn Erso.”

“Got any other statistics on who this child might belong to?” Baze calls up the ladder, sly. Jyn kicks out at him and he grins at her.

“Play nice,” Jyn says, pointing her welding torch at Kay before climbing back down. “Kera, honey,” she adds, distractedly, “be careful up there.”

“Did I just hear Jyn Erso advise someone to _be careful?”_ Kay asks. “How long have I been gone, Cassian?”

 

 

 

“We should name them,” Bodhi says. There’s a pause, then, and they all glance from ship to ship. They’re all thinking about Rogue One, but they all know that it would be far too risky to use something that has any association at all with Scarif and the Alliance.

“I have it,” Cassian says after a moment. He points to the new ship. “Storm.” The old ship, “Shadow.”

Jyn feels her face light up like a flame.

Baze looks at her sidelong and she ducks her head.

“I feel there’s a story there,” Chirrut says, sly. Baze snorts.

Cassian catches Jyn’s eye, openly grinning. “Nothing life-changing,” he says, and she elbows him in the gut before storming away. There’s a signal flashing on the comms panel and now seems like an excellent time to put the headphones on and pretend she can’t hear the others.

“That is a term used on Wecacoe,” she can hear Kay saying as she goes. “I believe Cassian is making a sentimental reference to the mission that turned out to have such a major impact on his life.”

“Oh?” Bodhi enquires.

“Yes, it was on Wecacoe that Cassian reprogrammed me.”

“Ah,” Bodhi says. Even he sounds on the verge of laughter, the traitor. “Yes. That must be it.”

“Let’s pack it up,” Jyn calls to them. “Draven thinks there’s some fun to be had on Naator for us.”

“Draven wants us to have fun now?” Kay asks. “Cassian, how long _have_ I been away?”

 

 

_Six Months Earlier_

_Kera had always secretly wished to find her Papa._

_Her mother had promised to try and find him if she could, but Kera’s wasn’t a baby. She knew Mama thought they would never find him._

_But Kera knew it. She just_ knew _._

_Sometimes at night she would hold her necklace in her hand and think about him. Her Papa._

_That maybe he would have that funny scratchy beard she’d seen on one of the traders on Takodana._

_Or he might be really tall like the Wookies she’d seen Mama bargain with on a space station once._

_Sometimes she dreamed that he would sing to her, not the wordless songs Feren sang, but something new and special, something just for the two of them._

_And as she slid slowly into dreams, Kera would watch the crystal light up in her hand and she would_ wish _. Wish with everything inside of her. Eyes closed tight, crying out to the universe._

I wish for Mama to find Papa. Just one more time.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading!


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